Consciousness – Sat Sangha Salon

A New Consciousness in Man is at Hand – Osho

The following is an excerpt from a talk Osho gave in 1970:

You admire America so much, you say that socialism will come first in America, but it is in America where hippies, Beatles and beatniks are increasing in number, where people are taking increasingly to drinks and drugs like LSD and mescaline, where consumption of sleeping pills and tranquilizers is assuming alarming proportions and where people are disturbed and restless. Can you say something about it?

You should know that no animal ever gets disturbed. Have you ever heard that a water buffalo lost his peace of mind? Have you ever seen a donkey spending a sleepless night or getting bored? Have you come across a bull committing suicide, because life became meaningless? No, no animals ever get bored. disturbed or worried; nor do they commit suicide. Why?

The reason is that the mind of animals is very undeveloped. The more the mind develops, the more you become sensitive and understanding. As the mind grows, your vision grows; you begin to see things around you with clarity. As your mind expands, your being expands in the same measure. And with the development of intelligence begins the search for the meaning of life, its significance. If there are hippies and Beatles and beatniks in today’s America, if its young men and women are getting rebellious, they are the barometer of the fact that consciousness is touching new heights there, that they see things that are not yet seen by us.

Man’s intelligence has developed in a great way, and it is this developed intelligence that is making him restless. The more intelligence, the more restlessness.

And remember. the greater your restlessness, the greater peace you can attain. Levels of peace and restlessness – their proportions are always the same. If man’s restlessness is say, only two milligrams, the peace he will attain is not going to be more or less than two milligrams. And if his restlessness grows to be a thousand tons, his peace will grow to be the same thousand tons. Our capacities in both directions – dialectical directions – grow together. They are coextensive. If I become very sensitive to ugliness, I am bound to be as sensitive to beauty too. The man with a high sense of beauty will have a high sense of ugliness also. Of course, ugliness will hurt him, but beauty will comfort him in the same measure.

As man’s consciousness expands, his world of anxieties will equally expand, because now the anxieties of others enter his awareness. Man, today, is much more intelligent than before, and that is why he is so anxious and unhappy too. But because of our mounting anxiety and unhappiness we need not despair and retrace our steps and turn back to the past, our new difficulties and problems are only a challenge and we have to accept the challenge and go onward and forward. We have to find new paths of peace – peace commensurate with our restlessness. Old paths will not do; new ones have to be found.

Man is, today, on a brink, and his consciousness is nearing a great leap forward, a quantum leap.

For example, when the first monkey came down from the tree and for the first time walked on two legs instead of four, he must have felt very awkward. And then the older monkeys, his elders, who remained sitting in the tree must have jeered at him, saying, “What are you doing, you fool? How stupid it looks. Is it becoming for monkeys to walk on two legs?” And the monkey walking on two legs must have gone through a lot of worry and anxiety, any amount of suffering. Maybe his backbone had ached, his sleep had been disturbed. But it was from this monkey that humanity came into being and developed to its present state. In the same way man’s grown-up consciousness today – which is undergoing such pains that it is driving him to the point of committing suicide – is soon going to give birth to a new humanity, a higher humanity.

The emergence of a new consciousness in man is at hand. And remember, the aboriginals still living in the jungles are not going to participate in this quantum leap, nor are the saints and priests sitting and singing in temples and mosques going to take part in this great transformation. They are all seeking comfort and contentment, and they are so afraid of discontent. Only they are going to be partners in the glory of giving birth to the new man who are prepared to walk through the fire of discontent, and who have the courage to go beyond it.

In this respect, we are a very unfortunate people. We cannot produce hippies, we cannot be that anxious, we cannot suffer so intensely, and consequently we cannot attain to that deep peace. America today stands as a vanguard on a forward line from where a leap is possible. It is a very critical situation where many times one may feel like escaping and retreating. That is why men like Mahesh Yogi have influence in America. The people who feel panicky and want to go back are being influenced by Mahesh Yogi and others. They are telling them, “Why worry? Get out of this mess; close your eyes, chant a mantra and go back to the past.” For the same reason Gandhi has influenced America more than he has influenced his own country. The backward-going mind has panicked, and it says, “Yonder is an abyss; let us go back! Gandhi is right to say that technology and skyscrapers are useless!”

The cry of “Go back to the past” has always been there, and it has done us no good. We have to go forward, there cannot be any going back. There is no way to do it. And even if there was a way, it would be so dangerous to do so. Nothing can be gained by returning to the past. If a grade four student wants to go back to first grade because the homework was easy, there is no sense in doing it. And even if he actually goes back, he will find it to be meaningless. He has now the maturity that comes with passing three grades; he cannot stay in first grade. So with his highly developed mind, man cannot go back to the times of Rama. He cannot return to the caves. Of course, he may enjoy it for a change if he returns to the forest for a while.

Recently about two dozen of my friends from Bombay had gone to Kashmir with me. In fact, they had escaped from Bombay and they were with me in Pahalgam, a scenic spot in Kashmir. The man who cooked for me at Pahalgam told me every day that he would be grateful if I took him with me to see Bombay. I said to him, “You seem to be crazy. You see the friends here with me, they are all from Bombay and they are here to see Pahalgam. You are fortunate to be in Pahalgam itself; better enjoy it.” He then said, “Life is so dull here that I wonder why people come here at all. There is nothing here. I crave to see Bombay.” He wants to see Bombay, and I want that he should have the opportunity to see that city. Why? – because then he will be able to enjoy Pahalgam too. That will be his gain if he visits Bombay.

Man has to go forward. Once in a while he can go back to the past to have a brief holiday. That would be pleasant. But a return to the past for good is not possible. It is different if for fun you sit sometimes at Rajghat with a spinning wheel as the leaders do. It is a pleasant hobby and a cheap one at that if you occasionally take to spinning and get photographed and filmed. But it would be utterly wrong if we make the spinning wheel the kingpin of our industries. That way the spinning wheel will be dangerous. No culture of the past, be it Hindu, Mohammedan or Christian, can make man happy if he returns to it. Man has to go ahead and ahead into the future. In that future no Hindu, no Mohammedan and no Christian will survive; only man will survive. In that future only man will live.

The future belongs to man. And here we have to think together about how much creativity we need to bring that future in. We also have to consider how much wealth and health will be needed to make man happy, so that from his happiness he creates music, he goes on the search for his soul, and ultimately reaches the temple of God.

There are many questions to be answered. I will take them up tomorrow. And if you have any more questions, you can send them in writing.

I am grateful to you for having quietly listened to my talk with so much love. And lastly, I bow down to the God residing in each of you. Please accept my salutations.

-Osho

From Beware of Socialism, Discourse #3, the last question

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Seeing Directly What We Are – J. Krishnamurti

One is aware, and naturally so, of the danger of physical insecurity – not having enough money, proper health, clothes and shelter, and so on – but we are hardly aware of our inner psychological structure. One feels that one lacks the finesse, sensitivity and intelligence necessary to deal with the inward problems.

Why is it that we are not as aware of the psychological dangers as the physical ones? We are well aware of the outward dangers – a precipice, poison, snakes, wild animals, or the destructive nature of war. Why is it that we are not completely aware inwardly of the psychological dangers such as nationalism, conflict within oneself, accepting ideologies, concepts and formulas, the danger of accepting authority of any kind, the danger of the constant battles between people no matter how closely they are related? . . . Either we escape from them, suppress them, try to forget them, or leave it to time to resolve them. We do all this because we do not know what else to do . . . there is never direct contact with the problem. There is never direct communication with the issue. We have to understand ourselves by seeing what we actually are; understanding it . . . through our own eyes, with our own hearts, our own minds. When we do that, all sense of following another, all sense of authority comes to an end. I think it is very important. Then do something directly for its own sake, not because someone tells us. I think this is the beginning of what it means to love.

– J. Krishnamurti

From the Brockwood Park talks, 1969; second talk

A Jumping Board for the Beyond – Osho

Meditation basically is nothing but a state of total awareness. Our mind is only partially aware; only one tenth of our totality is conscious, nine-tenths is in a deep dark night. All our problems arise out of that darkness, that blindness. And it is nine times more than our awareness. The so-called religions, moralities, go on trying to cultivate that fragment of consciousness.

You can teach, you can program that small fragment of consciousness, but it will remain superficial. In times of stress, it won’t help. One will remain very polite and humble, but only when everything is going good. When things start going wrong then suddenly all the repressed anger, violence, overwhelms one. Then the cultivated morality, the facade of character is of no use at all. That’s why people do things which you never thought they could do. A very good man, a nice man, in every way respected, can commit murder. He himself will not be able to believe how he could do it; hence the phrase ‘in spite of myself.’ It is a retrospective thinking later on when he comes back to his superficial consciousness, he can see that he has done it in spite of himself, because he is identified only with the conscious part. He has rejected the unconscious and that is nine times more.

That is our true reality, it cannot be rejected; and by cultivating the conscious part it remains unaffected, it remains the same. Hence my approach is not through character but through meditation.

The most fundamental thing is to make our consciousness bigger, to change the unconscious into consciousness — that is true religion. That’s what the whole purpose of alchemy was: the transformation of darkness into light, of the baser metal into gold. The gold represents light. And it is possible if you start becoming aware of what you are doing, of what you are thinking, of what you are feeling — just an undercurrent of awareness of all these three dimensions — then slowly, slowly awareness deepens. More and more parts of the unconscious are claimed by consciousness.

And once you have learned the knack of changing the unconscious into consciousness, then it is only a question of time, effort, patience. Then the day is not far away when the whole of unconsciousness disappears, and your inner world is full of light. Then whatsoever you do is moral, whatsoever happens through you is virtue — and that virtue is not cultivated at all. It is spontaneous. And when it is spontaneous it has a beauty of its own. When it is cultivated, it is pseudo, phony. It creates only hypocrites, and that’s why the whole world is full of hypocrites. It is not their fault; it is ten thousand years of stupidity perpetuated in the name of religion. Religion should be simply an alchemical process of transforming unconsciousness into consciousness.

A man without meditation is windowless, utterly closed to existence. No sun, no wind, no rain, reaches him. He lives almost in a grave. He is not alive. You are alive only in the proportion to which you are vulnerable, open. The more alive you are, the more windows you have, the more doors you have; and you are totally alive when you are just under the sun, under the sky, utterly naked, with nothing to keep you isolated, to keep you encapsulated. And that’s the function of meditation to create windows in you. In the beginning, windows, then doors; then by and by all the walls disappear. One day you find yourself for the first-time merging, melting, into the whole.

That’s the ultimate experience of bliss. But the beginning is in creating a small window; then go on making it bigger and bigger and bigger, so one day there is only window left. All the doors, all the walls, everything has disappeared. When there is nothing to disconnect you from existence, nothing to debar you, you experience godliness.

Meditation gives you unbounded space. It makes you as vast as the ocean. Without it one is only a dewdrop, confined into a very small space, imprisoned. And that’s our misery, that wherever we try to move there is a limitation. The body limits us, the mind limits us, even the heart limits us.

One has to go beyond the body, beyond the mind, beyond the heart. Only then, these three concentric circles transcended, you become as vast as existence itself. You are no more in that vastness. You cannot be the way you have always been; there is no ego.

The ego can exist only in the dewdrop. The ocean means egolessness. The moment you are infinite, you taste the truth for the first time; otherwise whatsoever we go on thinking about truth is not truth. Thinking about truth can never be truth. Truth is a taste on the tongue. The person who has never tasted sweetness may go on thinking about it for millions of years; still, he will not know what it is.

The blind man can think he knows light but all his thinking is futile. He may write a thesis, a great thesis, on light, he may be awarded a Ph.D. or a D. Lit., but still because he is blind he knows nothing of light. All his knowledge is mere knowledge, not knowing.

Truth has to be known. No information can be of any help. It is an existential experience and the only way to know it is to become it — to digest it and to be digested by it. Only in that union where I and thou disappear, where all dualities melt and become one, one knows. That state I call oceanic. That is the goal of sannyas.

One has to come out of the confinement of a dewdrop and become the ocean. One has to allow one’s dewdrop to slip into the ocean and disappear into the ocean. To be one with the whole is the only way to be holy.

Meditation is the essence of all true religion. Everything other than meditation is nothing but ritual. It is good for deceiving people, it is good for exploiting the fools, it is very good for the priests; the popes, the imams, but it is not religion. And a very strange thing is that all the vested interests are against meditation. They are all for going to the church, to the temple, to the mosque. They are all in support of reading the Bible every day, or the Gita, reciting it again and again and again but they are not in favor of meditation, because they have become aware again and again down the ages that the meditative person becomes a rebel.

The meditative person becomes so intelligent that he cannot be exploited and oppressed. The meditative person becomes so full of life that he cannot be repressed, crippled, paralyzed. He becomes so full of bliss and joy that you cannot make him afraid and you cannot make him greedy either; so your hell and heaven both become superstitions for the meditative person, because hell is nothing but exploitation of fear and heaven is exploitation of greed — two sides of the same coin. Because people are living in fear and in greed, the priest has invented hell and heaven; otherwise there is no hell, no heaven.

There is life eternal. And if you are silent, meditative, this very moment you are in paradise. And if you have gone astray from your own center, if you are no more centered in your being, you are in hell. Hell simply means living a life unconsciously and heaven means living a life consciously.

All the religions are afraid of meditation because it gives you the taste of paradise herenow and they all depend on a paradise after death; so you and your life can be postponed. Heaven will be after death and right now you have to live a meaningless life. So they go on giving you hope and hope is nothing but opium.

Meditation means becoming so aware, so intensely aware, now, this very moment, that all these stupidities are seen as stupidities, and the moment you see something as false you are free of it. Not only that, there is even more danger for the vested interests, for the establishment; the person who has come to know the false as the false and the true as the true does not remain hidden. He cannot remain hidden. He has to share his experience. He has to spread his fire.

And that fire can burn all the temples and all the churches and all the mosques. The meditative person will not be Christian, will not be Hindu, will not be Buddhist, will not be Mohammedan. He will simply be human. Hence the Christians will be against him, the Hindus will be against him, all the organised religions will be against him. He will not be a Christian of course; he will be a Christ. He will not be a Buddhist but he will be a Buddha — and that is dangerous.

The Buddhists don’t want another Buddha to be here, because the latest Buddha is bound to change the twenty-five-centuries-old scriptures of the Buddhists, because he will speak the idiom of the day, he will speak in the context of the contemporary humanity.

Christians will not like Christ to be here again. He will destroy all their business; hence nobody is in favor of meditation — and meditation is the essential core of religion. In other words all religions are against religion, against the true religion, against the essential religiousness. And my effort here is to make you aware that rituals are not religion, that scriptures are not religion, that belonging to a certain sect is not religion. Religiousness is a totally different phenomenon: it is the experience of your own being. Knowing it, all is known.

Mind separates, meditation unites. Mind functions as a wall, meditation functions as a bridge. Meditation simply means a state of no-mind; slipping out of the mind and the games of the mind is the whole art of meditation. And it is not a difficult thing — we have just never tried it, that’s why it appears difficult. We have always lived in the mind so we don’t know that there is a way to live beyond the mind too.

Once you have taken even a single step out of the mind you will be surprised; you were living unnecessarily in a prison. There was nobody guarding the door, you were not chained, you were just not aware that there is a beyond too. And the way out of the mind is to become aware of the mind and its mechanism, memory, imagination, thoughts, desires, fantasies — the traffic is there, continuously going on. You have just to stand by the side and watch whatsoever is passing, with no judgement, with no evaluation; just a silent mirror reflecting whatsoever is passing by. Not even making any comments that this is good, this is bad, that this is not so good, that this should not be or should be — without any commentary, just watching.

In the beginning it seems difficult because our habit is of continuously commenting, but just a little patience, sitting silently, doing nothing, just watching; it comes. And when it comes it opens a totally new dimension. You can see the whole mind passing by and then you know that you are not the mind, because the one who is seeing the mind passing by cannot be the mind. The observer cannot be the observed — and that is the moment you are out of the mind. That is the moment a tremendous freedom comes. One is no more confined to anything. The imprisoned splendor is released; and life begins only then. Before that we are just living a so-called life, lukewarm, with no intensity, with no passion, with no totality.

Man lives mechanically, just like a sleepwalker, a somnambulist; he goes on doing things but almost like a robot. If you start watching your acts you will be surprised that you go on making the same mistakes every day. And you have decided many times not to do them again, but those decisions are meaningless. When the situation arises again, you react immediately in the old pattern. You don’t know how to respond.

These two words are significant. ‘Reaction’ means mechanical, unconscious and ‘response’ means non-mechanical, conscious. ‘Response’ means acting according to the situation and ‘reaction’ means acting according to the old pattern. reaction means following ready-made answers, following a built-in programme, being dictated and dominated by the past — that is reaction. And living in the moment, in the moment, with no interference from the past, is response.

A sannyasin has to be responsible in this sense, not in a moralistic sense, not in the sense of being dutiful, but in the sense of being conscious. To be conscious means acting out of the light of awareness; otherwise people are acting out of darkness — stumbling, groping. Yes, once in a while just accidentally they can do something right, but that is accidental. It has no value at all.

Ninety-nine per cent they will do wrong. One percent, accidentally, they will do right; but accidental right has no value. It is not virtue.

One has to be full of light. And when there is light you know where the door is, you need not stumble. You know where the furniture is, you need not stumble. You know exactly what is what and you act according to that understanding.

Meditation creates light within you. Without meditation one is living in a dark night of the soul. And the strange thing is that we have all the things necessary to create light.

In a Sufi story, a man is hungry. He has flour, he has water, he has butter, he has fuel, he has fire, he has everything — he can make bread. But he is just sitting there hungry, because he cannot eat the fuel, he cannot eat the flour, he cannot eat all these things which only need to be put in a certain combination. Once they are put in a certain combination they will become eatable.

We are born with everything that is needed to create light, but you have to use a little intelligence to put everything in its right place. And that’s what meditation is: putting things in their right place. And once they are in the right place a great harmony arises. Once life becomes such a deep accord, so full of music, so full of joy, so full of light, out of that joy, that music, that light, whatsoever you do is right.[…]

So I am all for reality. My approach is pragmatic.

I am a realist, not an idealist. I don’t believe in all that hocus-pocus. And to be my sannyasin means to be utterly realistic, pragmatic, grounded in the Earth. And because one is grounded one starts growing like a tree into the sky towards the stars, and then there is immense contentment.

Meditation is a process of rebirth. The first birth is only physiological, biological material. Don’t think that that’s all there is to life. Coming out of the womb of the mother is only an opportunity for a second birth, for the real birth. The day you come out of the womb of your psychology, you are really born. In India we have called the people who have known the truth, twice born, dwija. And unless one becomes twice born, one lives in vain. […]

-Osho

From The Old Pond, Plop!, Chapter #17 (an unpublished darshan diary)

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Consciousness is the Bridge – Osho

Would you talk to us about using sexual energy for growth, as it seems to be one of our main preoccupations in the West.

Sex is the energy. So I will not say sexual energy – because there is no other energy. Sex is the only energy you have got. The energy can be transformed – it can become a higher energy. The higher it moves, the less and less sexuality remains in it. And there is an end peak where it becomes simply love and compassion. The ultimate flowering we can call divine energy, but the base, the seat, remains sex. So sex is the first, bottom layer of energy – and God is the top layer. But the same energy moves.

The first thing to be understood is that I don’t divide energies. Once you divide, then a dualism is created. Once you divide, then conflict and struggle are created. Once you divide energies, you are divided – then you will be for or against sex. I am neither for nor against, because I don’t divide. I say sex is the energy, the name of the energy; call that energy X. Sex is the name of that X energy, the unknown energy, when you are using it only as a biological reproduction force. It becomes divine once it is freed from biological bondage, once it becomes non-physical – then it is the love of Jesus or the compassion of Buddha.

The West is much obsessed today because of Christianity. Two thousand years of Christian suppression of sex energy has made the Western mind too much obsessed with it. First, for two thousand years the obsession was how to kill it. You cannot kill it. No energy can be killed – energy can only be transformed. There is no way to destroy energy. Nothing can be destroyed in this world, it can only be transformed, changed, moved into a new realm and dimension. Destruction is impossible. You cannot create a new energy, and you cannot destroy an old energy. Creation and destruction are both beyond you. They cannot be done. Now, scientists agree to this – not even a single atom can be destroyed.

For two thousand years, Christianity was trying to destroy sex energy. Religion consisted of becoming absolutely without sex. That created a madness. The more you fight, the more you suppress, the more sexual you become. And then sex moves deeper into the unconscious. It poisons your whole being. So if you read the lives of Christian saints, you will see they are obsessed with sex. They cannot pray, they cannot meditate. Whatsoever they do, sex comes in. And they think that the devil is playing tricks. Nobody is playing tricks. If you suppress, you are the devil.

After two thousand years of continuous sex-repression, the West became fed up with it. It was too much. The whole wheel turned. Now, instead of repression, indulgence, to indulge in it became the new obsession. From one pole the mind moved to the other pole. The disease remained the same. Once it was repression. Now it is how to indulge more and more in it. Both are sick attitudes.

Sex has to be transformed – neither repressed nor madly indulged. And the only possible way to transform sex is to be sexual with deep meditative awareness. It is just the same as I was saying about anger. Move into sex, but with an alert, conscious, mindful being. Don’t allow it to become an unconscious force. Don’t be pulled and pushed by it. Move knowingly, understandingly, lovingly. But make sexual experience a meditative experience. Meditate in it. This is what the East has done through Tantra.

And once you are meditative in sexual experience, the quality of it starts changing. The same energy which is moving into sexual experience starts moving towards consciousness. You can become so alert in a peak sexual orgasm, as you can otherwise never become – because no other experience is so deep, no other experience is so absorbing, no other experience is so total. In a sexual orgasm, you are totally absorbed, root and all – your whole being vibrating, your whole being in it. Body, mind – both are in it. And thinking stops completely. Even for a single second, when the orgasm reaches its peak, thinking stops completely, because you are so total you cannot think.

In a sexual orgasm you are. Being is there without any thinking. In this moment, if you can become alert, conscious, then sex can become the door towards the divine. And if in this moment you can become alert, that alertness can be carried in other moments also, in other experiences also. It can become a part of you. Then eating, walking, doing some work, you can carry that alertness. Through sex, the alertness has touched your deepest core. It has penetrated you. Now you can carry it. And, if you become meditative, you will come to realize a new fact. That fact is that it is not sex that gives you bliss, it is not sex that gives you the ecstasy. Rather, it is a thoughtless state of the mind and total involvement in the act that gives you a blissful feeling.

Once you understand this then sex will be needed less and less, because that thoughtless state of mind can be created without it – that’s what meditation means. And that totality of being can be created without sex. Once you know that the same phenomenon can happen without sex, sex will be needed less and less. A moment will come when sex will not be needed at all.

Remember, sex is always dependent on the other. So in sex, a bondage, a slavery remains. Once you can create this total orgasmic phenomenon without any dependence on anybody else, when it has become an inner source, you are independent, you are free. That’s what is meant when, in India, we say only a brahmachari, an absolutely celibate person, can be free – because now he is not dependent on anybody else, his ecstasy is his own.

Sex disappears through meditation, but this is not destroying the energy. Energy is never destroyed; only the form of the energy changes. Now it is no longer sexual, and when the form is no longer sexual, then you become loving.

So, really, a person who is sexual cannot love. His love can only be a show. His love is just a means towards sex. A person who is sexual uses love just as a technique towards sex. It is a means. A sexual person cannot really love, he can only exploit the other; and love becomes just a way to approach the other.

A person who has become non-sexual, and the energy is moving within, has become auto-ecstatic. His ecstasy is his own. Such a person will be loving for the first time. His love will be a constant showering, a constant sharing, a constant giving. But to achieve this, you are not required to be anti-sex. To achieve this, you have to accept sex as part of life, of natural life. Move with it – only move with more consciousness. Consciousness is the bridge, the golden bridge, from this world to the other, from hell to heaven, from the ego to the divine.

Enough for today?

-Osho

From My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, Discourse #5, Q2

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

By the Merit of a Single Sitting – Osho

By the merit of a single sitting, he destroys innumerable sins.

Hakuin says: Don’t be worried about sins and your past karma. In a single sitting of meditation, all that can be burnt. The fire of meditation is so potential, it can burn your whole past in a single moment. There is no need to be worried about past karma – “I have done some bad, so I have to suffer. I have done something, so I have to go to Hell.” If you want to go, you will have to go! But these are all rationalizations that you are trying to find. If you wish, it is your wish – it will be fulfilled. This existence is very obliging. It goes on obliging – if you want to go to Hell, it supports. It says, “Go! I am all with you.”

But if you decide that “Enough is enough, and I have suffered enough,” a single moment of meditativeness is enough to burn all your millions of past lives and millions of future lives too. You are released.

Start meditating. First on the body. Then on your inner feelings of bliss, joy. And go moving inwards. And one day the song of Hakuin will burst forth in you too. You will flower. And unless you flower you have not lived or lived in vain. You are here to bloom. And unless you bear much fruit and much flowers you will go on missing the meaning of life.

People come to me, and they ask, “What is the meaning of life?” As if meaning is there somewhere sold in the market. As if meaning is a commodity. Meaning has to be created. There is no meaning in life. Meaning is not a given thing; it has to be created. It has to become your inner work. Then there is meaning – and there is great meaning.

Love and meditate and you will attain to meaning. And you will attain to life, an abundant life.

-Osho

From This Very Body the Buddha, Discourse #1

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Realization is a Deep Communion – Osho

Sarva niramaya paripoornohamasmiti mumukshunam mokshaik siddhirbhawati.

I am that absolutely pure brahman: to realize this is the attainment of liberation.

Existence is divided into two. Existence, as we see it, is a duality. Biologically, man is divided into two: man and woman. Ontologically, Existence is divided into mind and matter. The Chinese have called this “yin and yang.” The duality penetrates every realm of Existence. We can say that sex penetrates every layer of Existence. The duality is always present.

This duality also penetrates into mind itself. There are two types of mind, two types of mentality – masculine and feminine. You can give other names also, Western and Eastern, or, more particularly, you can call it Greek and Hindu. In a more abstract way, the division can be called philosophical and religious.

The first thing to be discussed today is the differences between the Greek mind and the Hindu mind. The Upanishads are the peak of the Hindu mind – of the Eastern mentality or the religious way of looking at Existence. It will be easy to understand the Hindu mind in contrast to the Greek mind, and these are the basic minds.

When I say, “Greek mind,” what do I mean? The Greek mind is one aspect of the duality of minds. The Greek mind thinks, speculates; the approach is intellectual, verbal, logical. The Hindu mind is quite the contrary. It doesn’t believe in thinking, it believes in experiencing. It doesn’t believe in logic, it believes in an irrational jump into Being itself. The Greek mind speculates as an outsider standing outside – as an observer, an onlooker. The Greek mind is not involved. The Greek mind says that if you are involved in something, you cannot think scientifically. Your observation cannot be just: it becomes prejudiced. So one must be an observer when one is thinking.

The Hindu mind says you cannot think at all when you are standing outside. Whatsoever you think, whatsoever you try to think, will be just about the periphery: you can not to know anything about the center. You are standing outside. Penetrate in! So much penetration is needed to know that ultimately you become one with the center. Only then do you know rightly; otherwise, everything is just acquaintance, not knowledge.

The Greek mind analyzes: analysis is the instrument for it to know anything. The Hindu mind synthesizes. Analysis is not the method – not to divide into parts, but to look for the whole in every part. The Hindu mind is always looking for the whole in the part. The Greek mind, in Democritus, comes to atoms, because if you go on analyzing, then the atom becomes the reality – the last particle which cannot be divided. The Hindu mind reaches to Brahman – to the Absolute. If you go on synthesizing, then ultimately the Absolute, the Whole, is reached. If you go on dividing, then the last particle – the last divisible particle – is the atom. If you go on adding, then there is the Brahman, the Ultimate, the Absolute.

The Greek mind could develop to be a scientific mind because analysis helps. The Hindu mind could never develop to be a scientific mind because synthesis can never lead to any science. It can lead to religion but not to science. The Western mind is the development of the Greek seed. So logic, conceptualization, thinking, rational analysis, they are the foundations for the West. Experience, not thinking, is the foundation for the Indian mind. So I would like to say that the Hindu mind is basically non-philosophical – not only non-philosophical, but, really, anti-philosophical. It doesn’t believe in philosophizing: it believes in experiencing.

You can think about love, you can analyze the phenomenon, you can create a hypothesis to explain it, you can create a system about it. In order to do this, it is not necessary to be in love yourself. You can be an outsider, you can go on observing love, and then you can create a system, a philosophy, about love. The Greeks say that if you yourself are in love, then your mind will be muddled. You will not be able to think. Then you will not be able to be impartial. Then your personality will enter into your theory and that will be destructive to it.

So you must be as if you are not. You must be out of it completely, totally. Do not become involved. To know about love, it is not necessary to be in love. Observe the facts, collect the data, experiment on others. You must always remain outside; then your observation will be factual. If you yourself are in love, then your observation will not be factual. Then you are involved, you are part of it, you are prejudiced.

But the Hindu mind says that unless you are in love, how can you know love? You can observe others love, but what are you observing? Just the behavior of two persons who are in love. You are not observing love – just the behavior of two persons who are in love. They may be just acting. You cannot know whether they are acting or really in love. They may be hiding their real hearts. You can see their faces, you can listen to their words, you can look at their acts, but how can you penetrate into their hearts? And if you are not capable of penetrating into their hearts, how can you know love?

Sometimes love is absolutely silent and sometimes the deception of love is very much vocal. So you can observe thousands and thousands of lovers, but still you cannot penetrate into the very phenomenon of love unless you are in love.

So the Hindu mind says that experience is the only way, not thinking. Thinking is verbal; you can do thinking in your armchair. You need not go into any phenomenon. When I say that thinking is verbal, I mean that you can play with words, and words have a tendency to create more words. Words can be arranged in a pattern, in a system. Just as you can make a house of playing cards, you can make a system of words. But you cannot live in it; it is only a house of cards. You cannot experience it; it is only a system of words – mere words.

Jean-Paul Sartre has written his autobiography, and he has given a name to his autobiography which is very meaningful, very significant. He has called his autobiography Words. It is not only his autobiography – this is the whole autobiography of Western thinking – words.

The Hindu mind believes in silence, not in words. Even if the Hindu mind speaks, it speaks about silence. Even if words are to be used, they are used against words. When you are creating a system out of words, logic is the only method. Your words must not be contradictory; otherwise the whole house will fall down. Your system must be consistent. If you are consistent with your words, then you are logical in your system.

So many systems can be created, and each philosopher creates his own system, his own world of words. And if you take his presuppositions, you cannot refute him, because it is only a play, a game of words. If you accept his premises, then the whole system will look right. Within the system there is an inner consistency.

But life has no systems. That is why the Hindu emphasis is not on word systems, but on actual realization, actual experiencing. So Buddha reaches the same experience that Mahavira reaches, that Krishna reaches, that Patanjali or Kapil or Shankara reaches. They reach to the same experience! Their words differ, but their experience is the same. So they say, “Whatsoever we may say, howsoever it may contradict what others have said, whenever someone reaches to the experience, it is the same.” The expression is different, not the experience. But if you have no experience, then there is no meeting point at all. My experience and your experience will meet somewhere, because experience is a reality and the reality is one.

So if I experience love and you experience love, there is going to be a meeting. Somewhere we are going to be one. But if I talk about love without knowing love, I create my own individual system of words. If you talk about love without knowing love, you create your own system of words. These two systems are not going to meet anywhere, because words are dreams, not realities.

Remember this: the reality is one, dreams are not one. Each one has his own individual dreaming faculty. Dreams are absolutely private. You dream your dreams; I dream my dreams. Can you conceive of it – I dreaming your dreams or you dreaming my dreams? Can you conceive of us both meeting together in a dream, or of two persons dreaming one dream? That is impossible. We can have one experience, but we cannot have one dream – and words are dreams.

So philosophers go on contradicting each other, creating their own systems, never reaching to any conclusion. The Greek mind taught in abstract terms, the Hindu mind in concrete terms of experience. Both have their merits and demerits, because if you insist on experiencing, then science is impossible. If you insist on logic, system, reason, then religion becomes impossible.

The Greek mind developed into a scientific world view; the Hindu mind developed into a religious world view. Philosophy is bound to give birth to science. Religion cannot give birth to science: religion gives birth to poetry, art. If you are religious, then you are looking into the Existence as an artist. If you are a philosopher, then you are looking into the world as a scientist. The scientist is an onlooker; the artist is the insider. So religion and art are sympathetic, philosophy and science are sympathetic. If science develops too much, then philosophy, by and by, gradually transforms itself into science and disappears. […]

In the West, religion has no roots. Poetry is also dying because it can exist only with religion. These two types of mind develop into totally different dimensions.

When I say that religion gives birth to poetry, I mean that it gives you an aesthetic sense, a sense which can feel values in life: not facts, but values; not that which is, but that which ought to be; not that which is just before you, but that which is hidden. If you can take a non-rational, aesthetic attitude, if you can take a jump into Existence by throwing your logic behind, if you can become one with the ocean of Existence, if you can become oceanic, then you begin to feel something which is Divine.

Science will give you facts, dead facts. Religion gives you life. It is not dead: it is alive. But then it is not a fact – then it is a mystery. Facts are always dead, and whatsoever is alive is always a mystery. You know it and yet you do not know it. Really, you feel it. This emphasis on feeling, experiencing, realization, is the last sutra of this Upanishad.

This Upanishad says: “I am that absolutely pure Brahman. To realize this is the attainment of Liberation.”

Before we probe deeply into this sutra, one thing more: if you have a logical mind, a Western way of thinking, a Greek attitude, then your search is for Truth, for what Truth is. Logic inquires about Truth, about what Truth is.

Hindus were never very interested in Truth, never! They were interested more in mokska – Liberation. They ask again and again, “What is moksha? What is freedom?” not “What is Truth?” And they say that if someone is seeking Truth, it is only to reach freedom. Then it becomes instrumental – but the search is not for Truth itself.

Hindus say that that which liberates us is worth seeking. If it is Truth, okay, but the search is basically concerned with freedom – moksha. You cannot find a similar search in Greek philosophy. No one is interested – neither Plato nor Aristotle: no one is interested in freedom. They are interested in knowing what Truth is.

Ask Buddha, ask Mahavira, ask Krishna. They are not really concerned with Truth: they are concerned with freedom – how human consciousness can attain total freedom. This difference belongs to the basic difference of the mind. If you are an observer, you will be interested more in the outside world and less with yourself, because with yourself you cannot be an observer. I can observe trees, I can observe stones, I can observe other persons. I cannot observe myself because I am involved. A gap is not there.

That is why the West remained uninterested in the Self. It was interested in others. Science develops when you are interested in others. If you are interested in trees, then you will create a science out of it. If you are interested in matter, then you will create physics. If you are interested in something else, then a new science will be born out of that inquiry. If you are interested in the Self, then only is religion born. But with the Self a basic problem arises: you cannot be there as a detached observer, because you are both the observer and the observed. So the scientific distinction, the detachment, cannot be maintained. You alone are there, and whatsoever you do is subjective, inside you: it is not objective.

When it is not objective, a Greek mind is afraid – because you are travelling into a mystery. Something must be objective so that if I say something others can observe it also. It must become social! So they inquire into what Truth is. They say, “If we all arrive at one conclusion through observation, experimenting, thinking, if we can come to a conclusion objectively, then it is Truth.”

Buddha’s truth cannot be Aristotle’s truth because Aristotle will say, “You say you know something, but that is subjective. Make it objective so we also can observe it.” Buddha cannot put his realization as an object on a table. It cannot be dissected. You cannot do anything with Self. You have to take Buddha’s statement in good faith. He tells you something, but Aristotle will say, “He may be deluded. What is the criterion? How to know that he is not deluded? He may be deceiving. How to know that he is not deceiving? He may be dreaming. How to know that he has come to a reality and not to a dream? Reality must be objective; then you can decide.”

That is why there is only one science and so many religions. If something is true, then in science two theories cannot exist side by side. Sooner or later one theory will have to be dropped. Because the world is objective, you can decide which is true. Others can experiment on it and you can compare notes.

But so many religions are possible because the world is subjective – an inner world. No objective criterion of judgement, of verification, is possible. Buddha stands on his own evidence. He is the only witness of whatsoever he is saying. That is why in science doubt becomes useful; in religion it becomes a hindrance. Religion is trust because no objective evidence is possible.

Buddha says something. If you trust him, it is okay; otherwise, there is no communion with him, there is no dialogue possible. There is only one possibility, and that is this: if you trust Buddha, you can travel the same path, you can come to the same experience. But, again, that will be individual and personal; again, you will be your own evidence. You cannot even say this, that “I have achieved the same thing Buddha has achieved,” because how to compare?

Think of it in this way: I love someone; you love someone. We can say that we are both in love, but how am I to know that my experience of love is the same as your experience of love? How to compare them? How to weigh? It is difficult. Love is a complex thing. Even simpler things are difficult. I see a tree and I call it green. You also call it green, but my green and your green may not be the same because eyes differ, attitudes differ, moods differ.

When a painter looks at a tree, he cannot be seeing the same green as you see when you look at it, because the painter has a more sensitive eye. When you see green it is just one green; when the painter sees a tree it is many greens simultaneously – many shades of green. When a Van Gogh looks at a tree it is not the same tree as you see. How to compare this – whether I am seeing the same green as you are seeing! It is difficult – in a way, impossible – even in such small simple things as the experience of green. So how to compare Buddha’s nirvana, Mahavira’s moksha, Krishna’s Brahman? How to compare?

The deeper we move, the more personal the thing becomes. The more in we go, the less possibility of any verification. And ultimately, one can only say, “I am the only witness of myself.” The Greek mind becomes afraid! This is dangerous territory! Then you can fall prey. Then you can fall a victim of deceivers, of deluded ones! That is why they go on insisting on objectivity: “What is Truth?” is the inquiry. Then one is bound to fall on objectivity.

The Hindu mind says, “We are not interested in Truth. We are interested in human freedom. We are interested in the innermost freedom where no slavery exists, no limitation; where consciousness becomes infinite, where consciousness becomes one with the Whole. Unless I am the Whole, I cannot be free. That which I am not will remain a limitation to me. So unless one becomes the Brahman, he is not free.”

This is the Eastern search. This too can be contemplated. You can think about it; you can also philosophize about it. This sutra says, “I am that absolutely pure Brahman. To realize this . . .” not “to contemplate about this,” not “to think about this” – because you can think, and you can think beautifully, and you can fall a victim to your own thinking. Thinking is not the thing. “To realize this is the attainment of Liberation.” Know well the distinction between thinking and realizing.

Ordinarily, everything is confused and our minds are muddled. A person thinks about God, so he thinks he is religious. He is not! You can go on thinking for lives together, but you will not be religious – because thinking is a cerebral, intellectual affair. It is done with words; life remains untouched. That is why, in the West, you will see a person thinking of the highest values and yet remaining on the lowest rung of life. He may be talking about love, theorizing about love, but look into his life and there is no love at all. Rather, this may be the reason, the cause: because there is no love in him, he goes on substituting it by theories and thinking.

That is why the East insists that no matter what you think, unless you live it, it is useless. Ultimately, only life is meaningful, and thinking must not become a substitute for it. But go around and look at religious people, so-called religious people; not only at religious people, but at religious saints: they are only thinking – because they go on thinking about the Brahman, go on talking about the Brahman, they think that they are religious.

Religion is not so cheap. You can think for twenty-four hours, but it will not make you religious. When mind stops and life takes over, when it is not your thoughts but your life, your very heartbeat, when your very pulse pulsates with it, then it is a realization. And to realize this is the attainment of Liberation – moksha, freedom. When one realizes that “I am the Absolute Brahman” – remember the word “realization” – when one becomes one with the Absolute Brahman, it is not a concept in one’s mind, now one is that, then one is free. Then the moksha, the Liberation, the freedom, is attained.

What to do? How to live it? This whole Upanishad was an effort to penetrate from different angles toward this one Ultimate goal. Now this is the last sutra. The last sutra says that you have gone through the whole Upanishad – but if it is only your thinking, if you have been only thinking about it, then howsoever beautiful it is, it is irrelevant unless you realize it.

Mind can deceive you – because if you repeat a certain thing continuously, you begin to feel that now you have realized it. If you go on from morning to evening repeating, “Everywhere is the Brahman, I am the Brahman, aham brahmasmi, I am Divine, I am God, I am one with the Whole,” if you go on repeating it, this repetition will create an autohypnosis. You will begin to feel – rather, you will begin to think that you feel – that you are. This is delusion; this will not help.

So what to do? Thinking will not help. Then how to start living? From where to start it? Some points: first, remember that if something convinces you logically it is not necessarily true. If I convince you logically about something, it doesn’t mean that it is true. Logic is groping in the dark. The roots are unknown: logic gives you substitutes for roots. [. . . .]

The whole life is a mystery. Everything is unknown, but we make it known. It doesn’t become known that way, but we go on labelling it and then we are at ease. Then we have created a known world: we have created an island of a known world in the midst of a great unknown mystery. This labelled world gives ease; we feel secured. What is our knowledge other than labelling things?

Your small child asks, “What is this?” You say, “It is a dog,” so he repeats, “It is a dog.” Then the label is fixed in his mind. Now he begins to feel that he knows the dog. It is only a labelling. When there was no label, the child thought it was something unknown. Now a label has been put: “dog,” so the child goes on repeating, “Dog! Dog!” Now, the moment he sees the animal, parallel in his mind the word “dog” is repeated. Then he feels he knows.

What have you done? You have simply labelled an unknown thing, and this is our whole knowledge. The so-called intellectual knowledge is nothing but labelling. What do you know? You call a certain thing “love,” and you then begin to think that you have known it. We go on labelling. Give a label to anything and then you are at ease. But go a little deeper, penetrate a little deeper beyond the label, and the unknown is standing. You are surrounded by the unknown.

You call a certain person your wife, your husband, your son. You have labelled; then you are at ease. But look again at the face of your wife. Take the label off, penetrate beyond the label, and there is the unknown. The unknown penetrates every moment, but you go on pushing it, huffing it. You go on trying – “Behave as the label demands!”

And everyone is behaving according to the label. Our whole society is a labelled world – our family, our knowledge. This will not do. A religious mind wants to know, to feel. Labelling is of no use. So feel the unknown all around; discard the labelling. That is what is meant by unlearning – to forget whatever you have learned. You cannot forget it but put it aside. When you look again at your wife, look at something unknown. Put the label aside. It is a very strange feeling.

Look at the tree you have passed every day. Stop there for a moment. Look at the tree. Forget the name of the tree; put it aside. Encounter it directly, immediately, and you will have a very strange feeling. We are in the midst of an unknown ocean. Nothing is known – only labelled. If you can begin to feel the unknown, only then is realization possible. Do not cling to knowledge, because clinging to knowledge is clinging to the mind, is clinging to philosophy. Throw labelling! Just destroy all labelling!

I do not mean that you should create a chaos. I do not mean that you should become mad. But know well that the labelled world is a false creation of man – a mind creation. So use it. It is a device, so it is good. Use it; it is utilitarian. But do not be caught in it. Move out of it sometimes. Sometimes, go beyond the boundaries of knowledge. Feel things without the mind. Have you ever felt anything without the mind – without the mind coming in? We have not felt anything. [. . . .]

You go to a tree. You say, “Okay, this is a mango tree.” Finished! The mango tree is finished by your label. Now you need not bother about it. A mango tree is a great existence. It has its own life, its own love affairs, its own poetry. It has its own experiences. It has seen many mornings, many evenings, many nights. Much has happened around it and everything has left its signature on it. It has its own wisdom. It has deep roots into the earth. It knows the earth more than you because man has no visible roots into the earth. It feels the earth more than you.

And then the sun rises – for you it is nothing because it is a labelled thing. But for a mango tree it is not simply that the sun is rising: something rises in it also. The mango tree becomes alive with the sun’s rising. Its blood runs faster. Every leaf becomes alive; it begins to explode. We also know winds, but we are sheltered in our houses. This tree is unsheltered. It has known winds in a different way. It has touched their innermost possibilities. But for us it is just a mango tree. It is finished! We have labelled it so that we could move on.

Remain with it for a while. Forget that this is a mango tree, because “mango tree” is just a word. It expresses nothing. Forget the word. Forget whatsoever you have read in the books; forget your recipe books. Be with this tree for a while, and this will give you more religious experience than any temple can give – because a temple, any temple, is finally, ultimately, made by man. It is a dead thing. This is made by the Existence itself. It is something that is still one with the Existence. Through it, the Existence itself has come to be green, to be flowering, to be fruitful.

Be with it; remain with it. That will be a meditation. And a moment will come when the tree is not a mango tree – not even a tree: just a being. And when this happens – that the tree is not a mango tree, not even a tree, but just a being, an existence flowering here and now – you will not be a man, you will not be a mind. Simultaneously, when the tree becomes just an existence, you will also become just an existence. And only two existences can meet. Then deep down there is a communion. Then you realize a freedom. You have expanded. Your consciousness expands. Now the tree and you are not two. And if you can feel oneness with a tree, then there is no difficulty in feeling oneness with the whole Existence. You know the path now. You know the secret path – how to be one with this Existence.

So repeating a sutra like, “Aham brahmasmi – I am Divine,” will not do. Realize that knowledge is useless. Be intimate with the Existence. Approach it not as a mind, but as a being. Approach it not with your culture, your education, your scriptures, your religious philosophies – no! Approach it naked like a child, not knowing anything. Then it penetrates you. Then you penetrate into it. Then there is a meeting, and that meeting is samadhi. And once you feel the whole Existence in your nerves, when you feel yourself spread all over the Existence, “Then,” this sutra says, “this is the attainment of Liberation” – to realize this, not to think about it.

So realization is a deep communion – oneness. What is the difficulty? Why do we remain outside this Existence? The ego is the difficulty. We are afraid of losing ourselves: that is the only difficulty. And if you are afraid of losing yourself, then you will not be able to know anything in this life. Then you can collect money, then you can strive for higher posts, then you can collect degrees, diplomas, you can become very respectable, but you will be dead – because life means the capacity to dissolve oneself, the capacity to melt.

When you are in love you melt: love is a melting. And if you cannot melt in love, then it is going to be simply sex; it cannot become love. When you love someone, you melt. When you do not love, you become cold: you freeze. When you love you become warm and you melt.

Religion is a love affair. One needs a deep melting into the Existence. Science is a cold thing. Logic is absolutely cold, dead; life is warm. The capacity to melt yourself is known in religious terms as “surrender”; and the capacity to be frozen, cold, is known in religion as “ego.” Ego makes you ice-cold, frozen. Then you are just stone, dead. We are afraid of losing ourselves; that is why we, are afraid of love. Everyone talks about love, everyone thinks about love – but no one loves, because love is dangerous. When you love someone, you are losing yourself: you will not be in control. You cannot know things directly; you cannot manipulate. You are melting. You are losing control.

That is why, when someone loves someone, we say he has “fallen” in love. We use the word “falling”: we say “falling in love.” It is a falling, really, because it is a melting. Then you cannot stand aloof, cold, in yourself – you have fallen.

Look at a person who lives through mind: you can never feel any warmth in him. If you touch his hand, you cannot feel him there. If you kiss him, you cannot feel him there. He is like a dead wall. No response comes out of him. A man who loves is in continuous response. Subtle responses are coming from him. If you touch his hand you have touched his soul. It is not only his hand: he has come to meet you there – totally! He has moved: his soul has come to his hand. Then there is warmth. And if your soul can also come to the hand to meet him, then there is a meeting – a communion.

This can happen with a tree. And if it happens at all with anyone then it can happen with anything else – anything! It can happen with a stone, it can happen with the sand on the beach, it can happen with anything if at all it can happen – if you know how to melt, if you know how to dissolve yourself, if you know how to move in response and not in words. Words are not responses. [. . . ]

Religion is a love approach. It is a deep melting. And when you melt into the Existence, you become free. What is this freedom? When you are not, you are free. Let me say it this way: when you are not, you are free. Until you are not there, you cannot be free. You are your slavery, so you cannot become free: the “I” cannot become free. When the “I” dissolves, there is freedom. When you are not, there is freedom. So moksha, freedom, means a total dispersion of the ego. So learn it, or unlearn the coldness that everyone has created around himself. Unlearn the coldness and learn warmth. […]

So learn the language of love and unlearn the language of reason. No one is going to teach you, because love cannot be taught. If you have become bored with your mind, if it is enough, throw it! Unburden yourself, and suddenly you begin to move into life. Mind has to be there, and then it has to be thrown. If you throw the mind, only then will you know that “I am the absolute pure Brahman,” because only the mind is the barrier. Because of the mind you feel yourself finite, limited.

It is like this: you have colored specs. The whole world looks blue. It is not blue; it is only your spectacles which are blue. Then I say, “The world is not blue, so throw your specs and look again at the world.” But you do not know the distinction between your eyes and the specs. You were born with your spectacles, so you do not know the distinction between where specs finish and ‘I’ begins.

You have been thinking that your specs are your eyes: that is the only problem; that your thoughts are your life: that is the problem. The identity that your mind is your life: that is the problem. Mind is just like specs. That is why a Hindu looks at the world differently and a Mohammedan looks differently and a Christian differently: because specs differ. Throw your specs, and then, for the first time, you will reclaim your eyes. In India, we have called this approach darshan. It is a reclaiming of the eyes.

We have eyes, but covered. We are moving in the Existence just like horses move when they are yoked in front of carts. Then their eyes have to be covered from both the sides. They must look straight ahead – because if a horse can look around everywhere, then it will be difficult for the driver. Then it will go running anywhere and everywhere, so a horse is allowed to see only straight ahead in order that his world becomes linear. Now his world is not three-dimensional: he cannot look everywhere. The whole Existence is lost except the street. It is a dead street, because streets cannot be alive. It is a dead street, a dead road. [. . . .]

Every road leads to death. If you want life, then for life there is no fixed road. Life is here and now, multi-dimensional, spreading in every direction. If you want to move into life, throw your specs, throw your concepts, systems, thoughts, mind. Be born into life here and now, in this multi-dimensional life, spreading everywhere. Then you become the center and the whole life belongs to you, not only a particular road. Then the whole life belongs to you! Everything that is in it, all, belongs to you.

This is the realization: “I am that absolutely pure Brahman.” You cannot reach to the Brahman by any road. The path is pathless. If you follow a path, you will reach something, but it is not going to be the All. How can a path lead you to the All? A path can lead you to something, but not the All. If you want the All, leave all the paths, open your eyes, look all around. The Whole is present here. Look and melt into it, because melting will give you the only knowledge possible. Melt into it!

Thus ends “The Atma Pooja Upanishad.” This was the last sutra; the Upanishad ends. It was a very small Upanishad – the smallest possible. You can print it on a postcard, on one side. Only seventeen sutras, but the whole life is condensed into those seventeen sutras. Every sutra can become an explosion; every sutra can transform your life – but it needs your cooperation. The sutra itself cannot do it; the Upanishad itself cannot do it. You can do it!

Buddha is reported to have said: “The teacher can only show you the path; you have to travel it.” And, really, the teacher can only show you the path if you are ready to see it. Finally, the teacher is a teacher only if you are a disciple. If you are ready to learn, only then can a teacher show you the path. But he cannot force you; he cannot push you ahead. That is impossible! [. . . .]

The Upanishad can give you a light, but then that light will not be of any help, really. Unless you can create your own light, unless you start on an inner work of transformation, Upanishads are useless. They may even be dangerous, harmful, because you can learn them. You can easily become a parrot, and parrots tend to be religious. You can know whatsoever has been said, you can repeat it – but that is not going to help. Forget it. Let me blow out the candle. Whatsoever we have been discussing and talking, forget it. Do not cling to it! Start afresh! Then one day you will come to know whatsoever has been said.

Scriptures are only helpful when you reach realization. Only then do you know what has been said, what was meant, what the intention was. When you hear, when you understand intellectually, nothing is understood. So this can help only if it becomes a thirst, an intense inquiry, a seeking.

The Upanishad ends; now you go ahead and move on the journey. Suddenly, one day, you will know that which has been said and also that which has not been said. One day you will know that which has been expressed and, also, that which has not been expressed because it cannot be expressed.

One day Buddha was moving in a forest with his disciples. Ananda asked him, “Bhagwan, have you said everything that you know:”

So Buddha takes some leaves from the ground into his hand, some dead, fallen leaves – and he says, “Whatsoever I have said is just like these few leaves in my hand, and whatsoever I have not said and have left unsaid is like the leaves in this forest. But if you follow, then through these few leaves you will attain to this whole forest.”

The Upanishad ends, but now you start on a journey – deep, inward. It is a long and arduous effort. To transform oneself is the greatest effort – the most impossible, but the most paying. This Upanishad has been a deep intimate instruction. It is alchemical. It is for your inner transformation. Your baser metals can become gold. Through this process, your utmost possibility can become actual.

But no one can help you. The teacher only shows you the path – you have to travel. So do not go on thinking and brooding. Somewhere, start living. A very small lived effort is better than a great philosophical accumulation. Be religious – philosophies are worthless.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2 #16

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

We Only Meet Ourselves – Jean Klein

We all meet here together, but in reality, we only meet ourselves. In a meeting of people, there is only demand, a desire to overcome the feeling of loneliness and insecurity where the ego is constantly present. What is called love and giving between people, between objects, still comes from insecurity and the need for security. True contact occurs when there is no one left to meet, in a place that cannot be placed in time and space.

We exchange ideas to test its value, to identify the best way to see things, but we never try to place ourselves in our relationship with an idea or concept. Basically, it’s a form of reasoning that contains its own elimination, so sooner or later, you’ll discover that there’s no place for a personal identity. So, everything that preceded this living knowledge is totally cleared. There is only deep peace, free of conflict and problems, where there is no need to add or subtract anything. In this unit, there is no difference between you and me. But in your present situation, you know your thoughts, emotions, feelings, without knowing the knower. That’s the only difference between us.

-Jean Klein

From Consciousness and the World, pp. 67-68

Contentment: The Dispersion of Desires – Osho

Sarva santosho visarjanamiti ya aevam veda.

Total contentment is visarjan, the dispersion of the worship ritual. One who understands so is an enlightened one.

Total contentment is wisdom. Three things have to be understood. First, what total contentment is; second, what wisdom is, what it means to be wise, to be Enlightened; and third, why contentment is wisdom. Whatsoever we know about contentment is a negative thing. Life is suffering, much suffering, and one has to console oneself. There are moments when one cannot do anything, so one has to cultivate a certain attitude of contentment; otherwise, it would be impossible to live.

So contentment for us is just an instrument – a survival instrument. Life consists of so much suffering that one has to create this attitude. That attitude saves you from much which would become impossible to bear, which would be unbearable if there were no attitude of contentment. But this is not the contentment which is meant by the rishi. That is with all of us. So that contentment is not wisdom: rather, that contentment is part of ignorance. When you cannot do anything, the situation will be unbearable. If you go on feeling that you cannot do anything – if you go on feeling that nothing is possible, the situation will become unbearable, it will be suicidal – so you change the whole thing. You interpret in such a way that, really, you begin to say that you can do much, but you do not want to – that much is possible, that things can be different, but you are not interested. That change of emphasis is really deceptive. But life exists through so many illusions. They are helpful.

Nietzsche has said that without lies it is difficult to survive. If one thinks he will live simply by truth, he cannot live. So we go on believing in so many lies. They are our foundations in a way; they help us to be on this earth. And so many so-called truths are not really truths for you: they are simply lies. For example, you do not know that the soul is immortal, but you go on believing in it. That helps. That is a lie for you; it is not your experience. But to live with death will be almost impossible, so this lie helps. Then you can forget death. You know that life is going to continue. Only the body is going to be dead; you are not going to be dead. You will be there.

This is a lie to you. You do not know anything because you do not know anything more than the body. You are acquainted only with your body, and that too not in its totality. You do not know anything which is immortal. If you know anything immortal in yourself, then this is not a lie. But to know that immortality one has to pass through conscious death.

All meditations are really an effort to die consciously. If you can die consciously, only then do you come upon something which is immortal, which cannot die. But we believe in an immortal soul just to deceive ourselves. Through this belief life becomes easier. You have solved the problem without solving it. Now there is no death for you, and you can live as if you are going to live forever. Not only those who are theists, but even those who are atheists – who do not believe in souls at all and thus cannot believe in immortal souls – they too live in such a way as if they are going to live forever. They also have to deceive themselves by believing that there is no death and that there are so many lives.

Kant has said that if there were no God, then too we would have to invent him because without God it is difficult to live. Why? Because without God no morality is possible. Without God the whole edifice of morality falls down. All heaven, all hell, the results of your karma, everything falls down. So Kant says that even if there is no God, he is needed. He is required because without him morality becomes impossible, and to live without morality will be very difficult.

We can live as immoral beings – we are already living so – we can live in immorality. That is not difficult; we always live in it. But even to live in immorality we need moral concepts. So an immoral person also goes on believing. He may not be good today, but tomorrow he is going to be good. He is not going to be good in this life, but he will be good in the next life.

So even a sinner goes on believing that he is not really a sinner. Any day he can be a saint – that possibility helps. Then he can hope for the possibility and continue to be whatsoever he is. So whatsoever he is, is just in a shadow. His being a sinner is just a changing thing. It is not going to be permanent: he is going to be a saint soon. He can hope for the saint and he can continue to be a sinner. If you want to be a sinner, you need some hope against your being a sinner. If you do not have any hope, it will be difficult to continue. So even those who are immoral need morality. And a God is needed as a central force, as a governing energy, otherwise the whole thing will be a chaos.

Kant then says: “Do not deny God.” Kant has written two books, very valuable books. First, he wrote one of the most valuable books of these two or three hundred years. He wrote The Critique of Pure Reason in which he says that there is no God because reason cannot prove him, and that book is based on pure reason. So he goes on thinking about it, he goes on, and ultimately he comes to say that there is no God, because for reason it is impossible even to conceive of a God since there is no possibility of proving the hypothesis. Since he is an honest man, he argues and finds that God cannot be proved. So because this hypothesis is irrational, he concludes there is no God.

Then he feels uneasy because he was a very moral, religious man. He was one of the keenest intellects, but a moral man, so he felt uneasy for twenty years continuously. Then he wrote a second book: The Critique of Practical Reason. The first was The Critique of Pure Reason. He followed pure reason wheresoever it led, but then it was not leading to God. For twenty years concluding that there is no God he felt an uneasiness, as if he had done something wrong. And the wrong was not that without God there was any inconvenience for Kant, but that he saw that if there is no God, then to the whole world morality disappears, evaporates.

Then he writes in the second book that it is not possible to prove God through pure reason, but practical reason needs him. So God is not a rational hypothesis, but a practically reasonable hypothesis. Without God the whole thing will become unreasonable, so he says God is – not because God is, but because God is needed. Without God man is not possible. So if he is not, he has to be invented because only then does morality become possible.

For us there are so many hypotheses like this. We go on believing in them – not because we know – but because if we do not believe in them then we will know our ignorance, our deep ignorance. We want to avoid it, we want to escape from it.

Contentment to us is really a deep escape. We cannot fight life. We try, but we cannot succeed in it. No one ever succeeds. Everyone comes upon barriers; there are limitations. Not only those who are weak, but also those who are very strong in our eyes, who are more strong than others and who come a little further ahead, they also come to barriers. And from those barriers there is no escape. Even a Napoleon has to die; even an Alexander comes to know things which he cannot win. Then what to do?

One thing is to remain continuously in discontentment. That will become a cancer. You cannot sleep with it; you cannot forget it at any moment. It will become a continuous worry, an inner cancer in the mind. So create a facade of contentment: “I am a contented man. It is not that I cannot win these barriers – I do not want to win.” This is a rationalization: “I do not want to. It is not that I cannot win – I am not interested in winning!” You withdraw yourself and you give a rational flavor to it.

This contentment is a rationalization – a shrewd, cunning rationalization. This gives you a certain hope that if you want to you can do it.

Look at it in this way. I have known many people. One man I know is a habituated alcoholic. For thirty years he has been trying to leave alcohol, but he cannot leave it. It has become impossible. But still he will go on saying, he will come to me and say, “Any day I can leave it – if I will it.” And he has tried continuously for thirty years. He has willed so many times, and was defeated, and again he will fall, but he still goes on saying, “If I will, I can drop this habit in a moment.”

Because of this hope that “If I will . . .” he still feels he is not a defeated man. He is already a defeated man, and this hope allows him to live. He goes on thinking that any moment he can drop it: he is not a slave; he can drop it – he is only not dropping it because he does not want to drop it.

So one day I asked him, “You go on saying ‘If I will . . .’ but have you not tried so many times, have you not willed so many times, to drop it?”

Then he said, “Yes, I have tried many times, but the effort was not really wholehearted.”

So I asked him, “Have you tried any time when the effort was wholehearted?”

He said, “No! If I try wholeheartedly, I can leave it this very moment.”

I asked him, “Is it possible for you to do it wholeheartedly? Is it in your capacity to will it wholeheartedly? Is your will your own?”

He became uneasy, because when you feel that your will is not your own you will have to face your imprisonment, your slavery. So he is in an imprisonment, but he goes on believing that he is free. That helps you to live in a prison as if it is your home.

This is how we go on rationalizing, and this man cannot leave alcohol unless he leaves this rationalization. If he begins to feel that “Even if I will, I cannot leave,” then he is realistic. Then he has come down to the earth. And if he comes to feel that “I cannot do anything even if I will,” then he can do something because then he will not be living in illusion – he will have stumbled upon reality. And you can do something with reality, but you cannot do anything with illusions.

To escape from reality, we create many mental attitudes. Freud is reported to have said that religion will continue to have power over man not because religion is true, but because man needs many illusions and man is not yet adult enough, mature enough, to live without religion. In a way he is right, because as far as the majority of humanity is concerned religion is a rationalized illusion. Only sometimes – with a Buddha, with a Patanjali or with a Kapil – does it happen that religion is not an illusion but the Ultimate Reality. But for others religion is an illusion. It substitutes for your life, compensates. Your reality is so horrible that you need some illusions to compensate for it.

For example, if a country is very poor, it is bound to believe in a heaven after this life. That is a compensation. The reality is so horrible, so ugly, and there is so much suffering all around for which nothing can be done. But you can do one thing: you can believe in some heaven after this life and that will help you to live in this ugly poverty. Then you can live easily because it is a question of a few years, or only a few lives, then you will be in heaven. So this poverty is not something permanent which you have to be worried about. It is just a passing phase, just as if you are in a waiting room in a railway station. Let it be ugly, let it be as it is, because you are not going to stay here. It is not your home. A train will come and you will be away from this waiting room.

If there is a heaven after this life, then this life becomes just a waiting room. Everyone is waiting for his train. When the train comes, you will go away. You need not be worried. You can close your eyes and chant the Gayatri – a spiritual mantra – close your eyes and chant a mantra because this is only a waiting room. Religious people are reported to have continuously made the simile that this world is just a waiting room. You are not to be here forever, so do not be worried about it.

But if the waiting room is going to be your home, if it is not a waiting room but the whole of reality, then it will be impossible to live there. Then it will be impossible to live there even for an hour. But if it is a waiting room, you can live even lives in it, because the hope is always for something else. Really, you are not there. You have transferred yourself mentally to somewhere else. This is a trick. The mind has gone to live somewhere else; only the body is here, so you can continue.

Much of religion, so-called religion, is a compensation, a consolation. Whatsoever you lack in life, you substitute for it in your dream. Whatsoever you lack, you substitute in your dreams! That is why every religion, every country, every race, believes in different types of heaven and hell. You believe in one heaven; in another country the concept of heaven will be different – because your problems are different and their problems are different, so you cannot compensate with one heaven.

For example, Tibetans believe in a heaven which will be warm. Indians believe in a heaven which will be cool. Indians believe in a hell which is going to be fiery, a burning fire, hot; Tibetans believe in a hell which is ice-cold. Why this difference? This difference is one of compensation. Tibetans are already in India’s heaven and India is already in their hell. India cannot believe in a heaven unless it is air-conditioned. What type of heaven can it be if it is not air-conditioned? It must be air-conditioned! That is a compensation. Your contentment is a compensation. It is a cunning mental trick.

So do not think that those among us who are contented are very simple. They are very complex and cunning. Whenever a person says, “I am content with my poverty,” do not think that he is a simple man. He has created a very cunning attitude.

Once I met a great Jaina monk. He is a leader and he has a big following. Hundreds and hundreds of Jaina monks believe in him as their teacher. So when I met him, he recited a small poem. He had written that poem. He is an old man, very old: he lives naked.

He recited the poem. The poem had only one central idea continuously repeated, and the idea was this: “You may be a king, you may be on your golden throne, but I am happy in my dust. I do not care about it. I am contented in my hut. You may be in your palace; I am contented in my hut. Whatsoever you have is nothing to me, because death is going to snatch everything away from you.”

Like this ran the whole piece. This mind is very cunning. What is he saying? If he is really not interested in being a king, why compare? If you are really contented in your dust, why think of golden thrones? I have never heard any poem written by a king that says, “You may be happy in your dust, but I am contented on my golden throne.” Why has no emperor written this? There must be some reason.

And why does this man say that whatsoever you have will be snatched away by death? He feels happy about it. “Okay, be on your golden throne. Soon I will see that death snatches away everything, and then you will know who was happy. I am happy because death cannot snatch anything away from me.” This is a very cunning attitude; this is not contentment. But he was writing on contentment. That was the title of his poem – “Contentment.”

Is this contentment? If this is contentment then this sutra is not concerned with it. This sutra has a different meaning, a different dimension of contentment. What is it? In your case, you desire something, you cannot get it; or, even if you get it, the desire is still unfulfilled. Then you rationalize.

Then you say, “I must live in contentment because desire gives pain, because desire gives suffering, because through desire anxiety is created, through ambition one suffers unnecessarily. So I give up: I do not desire because I do not like suffering.”

This is not the contentment of this sutra. This sutra means many things, so it will be good to enter through many doors. One door for total contentment is non-desiring. Our contentment comes after the failure of desire; this contentment comes through desirelessness. It is not that desire is suffering, but that desire is futile; desire is useless, absurd. Knowing this, feeling this, realizing this, one becomes desireless. Then one will not say, “I do not care about your golden throne.” Then one will not compare and will not say, “I prefer my hut.”

Buddha left his palace. The night he left and renounced, only his driver came along just to leave him on the boundary of his kingdom. The driver is weeping. He loves him and he feels attached to him. He thinks this is absurd: “What has happened to Prince Siddharth? What is he doing? Leaving the palace? Leaving the kingdom? Leaving his beautiful wife? Leaving everything everyone desires? He has gone mad!” So he goes on weeping. He cannot say anything. He is a mere driver of Buddha’s chariot. But he loves him, he feels attached, and he feels that Prince Siddharth is going to do something foolish.

This is unimaginable to a poor man. His reaction is natural. He feels that it is obviously madness. What is Siddharth going to do? Then when he leaves, he says only one thing; he says, “I am no one to say anything to you; I am just a driver. And also, it is not my business to interfere. Your order is your order, so I have brought you to the boundary of your kingdom. But if you do not mind, let me say to you a few words. What are you doing? It seems mad! This is what man lives to attain. This is what everyone aspires to be. You were born in it. You are a fortunate one. Why are you leaving? Remember the palace! Remember your beautiful wife! Remember your father! Remember the kingdom and the happiness it brings!”

Buddha says, “I cannot understand what you are talking about. I have not left any palace behind; I have not left any kingdom behind. I have left only a nightmare. The whole thing was burning in a fire. I am escaping from it. I have not renounced it because the very word ‘renunciation’ means you are leaving something valuable behind. I have not renounced anything; there was nothing to be renounced. The whole thing is on fire. It was a nightmare. So I have escaped from it, and I thank you because you have helped me to come out from it.”

After that Buddha is never reported to have talked about his palace, about his kingdom, about his beautiful wife – never again. If this renunciation is a bargain, if this renunciation is for something to be achieved in the future, if this renunciation is just an investment for heaven, moksha, then you cannot forget it so easily. He completely forgot it. Why? He was not leaving something for something else.

If you leave something for something else, it is a desire. If you simply leave it, it is desirelessness. If you leave it for something else, then it is still desire. If you simply leave it looking at its absurdity, futility, nonsense, then it is desirelessness. And when a man is desireless, he is content. This is the first door. When a man is desireless, he is content, because now how can you make him discontented? He is in contentment because no discontentment is possible now. [. . . .]

Because we desire that some expectations be fulfilled in the future, the mind is a constant discontent. Looking at the infinity of life, looking at the endless process of life, one is contented. This is not a defense measure. This is wisdom.

Thirdly, let us look at this from some other door: contentment means consciousness here and now; discontentment means consciousness somewhere else, in the future. Discontentment is concerned either with the past or with the future. Contentment is here and now, in the present. A person who lives moment to moment will be contented, but we never live from moment to moment. Really, we never live in the moment! We always live beyond it – somewhere in the future. We are moving like shadows, and we go on moving in the future. And the more you move in the future, the more discontented you will be, because the future never comes.

There is no future in Existence. In Existence nothing like the future exists. Existence is a continuity in the present; Existence is here and now. Expectation is somewhere else – and they never meet. That non-meeting is discontentment. You hope, and there is no meeting. You dream, and there is no fulfillment. And there is a gap – an eternal gap always between you and your hopes – so you move in discontentment. Discontentment means a movement that is always in the future and never in the present.

Buddha says that only this moment is real. That is why philosophy is known as kshanikvad – “momentism.” This “momentism,” only this moment, is real. Do not move beyond it! Be here and now! Consider it, think it over: just for this moment, if you are here and now, how can you be discontented?

Discontent needs comparison. You compare with the past which is no more. It is no more, but you compare with it. In some past moment you were somewhere else, and that moment was very beautiful – filled with happiness. But now you are sitting here, and you compare with that moment – discontent is given birth. Or, you can contemplate into the future about some moment when you will be meeting with your beloved or your lover, or something else. You compare – then you are discontented.

Discontent means comparison of something which is not in the present, which is either past or future, with your present. If you are really here with no comparison to the past or the future, then where is the discontentment? Then whatsoever is the case, you are contented.

Comparison brings discontentment; contentment is non-comparison. If you forget comparing, no one can make you discontented. It is you, your mind working in comparison, which creates discontentment. And then, to avoid this discontentment, you cultivate contentment. To negate one thing, first you create it; then to negate it, you have to create something else. And you will not succeed in it, because to think of creating contentment is moving again into the future.

So you will go on thinking that you have to cultivate contentment, and you will go on being discontented. You will begin to feel discontent even in relation to contentment, because you have not created it yet, because you are still far away from it – far away from the goal. So even the goal of contentment, the ideal of contentment, will create more discontentment.

Our contentment is after we have created the disease. The contentment of the Upanishads is not to create disease at all. Do not move in comparisons. Each moment is unique. It cannot be compared. And this is the nonsense, the stupidity of the human mind: that the moment with which you are comparing your present moment was not so beautiful as you think, because when you were actually in that moment, you were thinking about something else. So the glory, the beauty, the happiness of it, is just a false phenomenon.

Everyone says that childhood was golden, and no child seems happy about his childhood. Every child is trying to grow up soon. If he can take a jump, if a child is allowed to take a jump, he will become his father immediately. No child is happy about his childhood, because childhood is such a slavery, and childhood is such a weakness, and a child is so much at the mercy of others. He feels it. Everything hurts. Mother and father and everyone is so strong, and he alone is so weak and dependent that he cannot do anything on his own. From everywhere comes the commandment “Don’t!”

So every child is in deep misery. He contemplates the day when he will also be an adult – powerful. But when he is an adult, he will begin to say, “Childhood was good.” When he is old, just near death, he will create a golden dream. He will say, “What bliss childhood was! What a heaven!”

Psychologists say that this is also a trick of the mind. Because the reality is so hard, you have to escape somewhere. You are not capable of facing it, you do not want to encounter it. Really, the old man is now near death, so he wants to escape from it. When he begins to think about childhood, he has escaped, because childhood is as far away from death as anything. In his imagination, he has moved to being a child again. Now there is no death, no disease, no illness, no oldness. He is passing into the past, but why not into the future?

Old men always escape into the past, young men always into the future. Why? Because for an old man the future means death, so he doesn’t want to see the future. Every day on the calendar a new date appears and death comes nearer. He doesn’t want to see it, and the easiest way is to escape into the past. And to escape, you have to make it golden and beautiful, otherwise the journey will be boring. If you really escape into the real past, it is going to be a boredom.

Ask any old man, “If a chance is given by the Divine to you, will you be ready to repeat the same life again?” He will say, “No! The same life?” He feels horrible. The same life? No one will be ready to repeat the same life – not even the same childhood.

If you are given the opportunity that this can happen, that you are allowed to be born again to your parents and have the same childhood, you will say no. And just one moment before you might have been saying that “My father was just godlike, a holy man. And my mother? The climax of motherhood!” But if someone says, “Now be born to them again,” you are going to refuse – because whatsoever you have been saying about your mother, about your father, about your childhood, about your home, about your village, about your country, is just an imaginative creation. It is not concerned with reality. You have created it to escape from reality. A young man is thinking of the future, moving into the future, but contentment means to be here.

Socrates is dying, and on his face, there is so much contentment that everyone feels it is strange – because he is just on the verge of death, and death is a certainty with him. He is to be given poison. The poison is being made ready, being prepared just outside his room. The room is filled with his disciples and friends. They are all weeping and crying, and Socrates is lying on the bed. He says, “Now the time is coming near. Ask those persons who are preparing the poison if they are ready yet, because I am ready.”

Someone asks, “Are you not afraid of death? Why are you so anxious to die?”

Socrates says, “Whatsoever is, is. Death is there. Death is coming nearer. I must be ready to meet it, otherwise I will miss the moment of meeting death. So be silent. Do not disturb me. Do not talk about past days.” Many are talking of past days, of how beautiful it was to be with Socrates, and Socrates says, “Do not disturb me. I have known you. In the past, in the days which you are talking about, you were not so happy as you are saying.”

His wife is weeping, and the same wife struggled with him her whole life. It was a long conflict, a long problem – never solved. Socrates says, “It is strange! Why is my wife weeping? I would have thought she would be filled with happiness when I died, because my life was such a burden and such a suffering for her. Why is she weeping? She never enjoyed any moment with me, and now she is weeping for those golden moments. They were never there; only now she is creating a past which never was. It seems she has suffered because of me, and now she will suffer because of my absence.”

Such is the stupidity of the human mind. You will suffer the presence, then you will suffer the absence. You cannot live with someone, and then you cannot live without him. When he is with you, you will see all the faults. When he is gone, you will see all that was good in him. But you never face the reality.

Then the poison comes and Socrates says, “Be silent. Do not disturb me. Let me be here and now. Do not talk about the past. It is no more.”

Someone asks Socrates, “Are you not afraid of dying? You seem so contented. Your face shows such silence. We have never seen anyone dying in such beauty. Your face is so beautiful! Why are you not afraid?”

Socrates says, “Only two are the possibilities, two are the alternatives. Either I am going to die completely. If this death is ultimate and there will be no Socrates, why bother? If I am not going to be at all, there is no question. There will be no suffering because Socrates will be no more. Or, the second alternative: only the body will die, and I, Socrates, will remain. So why bother?

“These are the only two alternatives possible, and I do not choose either of the two. If I choose, then it will become a problem. If the one I choose doesn’t happen and the other happens, then there will be disturbance and discontent and fear and insecurity, and I will begin to tremble.

“But these are two alternatives, and I am not the chooser. The whole is the chooser. Whatsoever happens, happens. If Socrates will be no more, Socrates is unworried. Or, if Socrates will still be there, again there is no worry – then I will be. As I am here, I will be there. Then I will continue, so no need of any worry. Or, I will drop completely; then no one will remain to worry. But no more questions.” Socrates says, “No more questions! Let me face death.”

He takes the poison, he lies down, and then he begins to face, to encounter, death. No one else has ever encountered death in that way. It is unique – Socratic. He says, “Now my legs have become dead, but I am as much alive as ever. My feeling of I-ness is the same. The legs have become dead, my legs are no more. I cannot feel my legs, but my wholeness remains the same.”

Then he says, “My half-body has become dead. I cannot feel it. The poison is coming up and up. Sooner or later my heart will be drowned in it, and it is going to be a discovery whether, when my heart has been drowned, I feel the same or not. But there is no expectation – just an open inquiry.”

Then he says, “My heart is going, and now it seems it will be difficult for me to speak more. My tongue is trembling and my lips are now giving way. So these are going to be the last words. But still, I say, I am the same. Nothing has dropped from me. The poison has not touched me yet. The body is far away from me, going away and away. I feel I am without a body, but the poison has not yet touched me. But who knows? It may touch, it may not touch. One has to wait and see.” And he dies.

This is facing the moment without moving from it anywhere. Then you have contentment. Contentment means life here and now, living moment to moment without any escapes.

That is why this sutra says that total contentment is visarjan. Visarjan is a particular process. Visarjan means dispersion.

In India, whenever someone worships, the deity is created. For example, Ganesh, Ganesh is created – an image is created. For the worship, the image is taken as Divine, so Divinity is invoked in it. Then, for particular days, for a particular length of time, it is worshipped. When the worship is over, the deity has to be dissolved into the sea or into a river. That is known as dispersion – visarjan. This is rare. This happens only in India, nowhere else in the world. Everywhere else they have permanent images of gods. Only India has impermanent images. This is rare!

India says that nothing is permanent and nothing can remain permanent – not even your image of a god. Because you have created it, it cannot be a permanent thing. Do not fool yourself. When the time is over, go and throw it back. Your god cannot be permanent. Go on throwing your gods – creating them and throwing them. Use them and throw them. Only then can you reach that God which is not your creation. The images are your creations, so they have an instrumental value. They are devices. They are necessary because you are still so far away from the reality, and it is difficult for you to conceive of an imageless God.

Create an image, but do not stick to it. No clinging is allowed. When the worship is over, throw it; throw it back into the mud. It is again mud. Then do not retain it. This is a very deep psychological process, because to throw a god needs courage, to throw a god needs detachment.

You were just worshipping – falling at the feet of the god, crying, weeping, dancing, singing – and now you yourself go and throw it into the sea. So it was just a device – nothing permanent in it. You used it as an instrument. Now the worship is over, so throw it and create it again whenever you need. This constant creating and throwing will always help you to remember that your created gods are not real gods. They are symbolic.

Hindus were never in favor of creating stone images. They came with Buddhists and Jainas, and with Buddhists and Jainas came temples. Hindus were really never in favor of stone images, because they give a false permanence. They give a false appearance of permanence.

A buddha dies, but his stone image remains when even Buddha himself dies. How can an image of Buddha be permanent? But a stone image gives a false appearance of permanence.

Hindus have believed in mud gods. Make a mud god; then rains will come and you will know what happens to your god. It is your god; this must not be forgotten. And all gods created by men are mud gods. They are bound to be because man himself is an impermanent entity. He cannot create anything permanent.

So do not create a false appearance. This is called dispersion – visarjan. This word is beautiful. First create the image, then uncreate it. It is not destroyed. Visarjan means “uncreated.” Create, then uncreate it; then let everything go again to its basic elements.

Hindus say death is a dispersion. You are created in your birth; you are a mud image. Then in death the elements move again to their original source. You are dispersed, and that which was not born in you, which was even before your birth, will remain after your death. But your image will disperse. The same is to be done with human gods, man-made gods – create them, then disperse them.

This sutra says that dispersion means contentment. Contentment is the dispersion – the visarjan of your worship. Why? Why call contentment “dispersion”? It is very deeply related.

Creation means desire. You cannot create unless you are filled with desire. Hindus are very logical in a way. They say God created the world because he felt the desire to create it. Even God cannot create the world without desire: he was filled with desire! Creation means desire. You cannot create without desire. Desire allows you movement, effort, then you create. Then how to uncreate?

If there is still desire, you cannot uncreate. Uncreation means no more desire, desirelessness, contentment. That is why this sutra relates visarjan to contentment. If a man is totally in contentment, then everything will disperse.

This is what Buddhists call Nirvana – cessation of desire. Buddha says that when there is no desire you will cease: you will disperse into the cosmos. Still, the desiring mind will ask, “But I will be somewhere. Will I not be somewhere? Where will I be?”

Buddha says, “It will be just like a flame going out.” Can you find out where it is, where it has gone? You blow out a candle, and the flame goes out. Where is it? So Buddha says, “It has simply dispersed. It went to the elements, to the source.”

It is everywhere or nowhere, and both are meaningful. If you say it is everywhere, it also means that now it is nowhere. You cannot find it anywhere now because it is everywhere. Or, you can say it is nowhere now because to find it is impossible. [. . . .]

This sutra says that contentment is visarjan – contentment is dispersion. When you are contented totally, you are out of the birth cycle. Now you will not be reborn again, because only desire is reborn, not you, and because of desire you have to follow. You become a shadow of your desire. The desires move ahead and you move behind. Now there is no desire, and one does not need any movement. One is freed from the wheel of rebirth, from samsara– the world. This is what Liberation is.

Disperse yourself. Through this dispersion, you disperse your desires. Attain the center of Being through contentment. Contentment is a centering in oneself, and one becomes unmoving, still, silent.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2, Discourse #14

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Make Haste to Become the Fourth – Osho

Gurdjieff used to say that there are seven types of men. Let me explain those seven types to you.

The first three types are very ordinary. You will find them everywhere, within and without.

The first, man number one, Gurdjieff calls ‘body-oriented’. He lives in the body. He is ninety-nine percent body. His whole life is body-oriented. He eats not to live; he lives to eat.

The second type of man, number two, is emotional – the feeling type, sentimental.

Number three is the intellectual.

These are the three common types. They are almost on the same level.

These three, in India, we have known long before. The body-oriented we have called the sudra. The feeling-oriented, the emotional we have called the kshatriya, the warrior. And the intellect oriented we have called the brahmin, the intellectual, the intelligentsia.

The fourth, the vaisya, the businessman, is in fact not a type – but an amalgamation of all the three. Something of the sudra exists in him, something of the intellectual also exists in him. He is not a pure type; he is a mixture. And, in fact, he is the majority, because to find a pure type is very difficult. To find a really perfect sudra is rare. To find a perfect brahmin is also rare. To find a pure warrior, a samurai, is also rare. The world consists of the fourth, which is a mixture, which is not really a type, just a crowd.

These are the three types. Unless you go beyond the three you will not be able to see. They are all blind.

One is blinded by the body. Another is blinded by feelings, emotions. Another is blinded by the intellect, thinking. But they are all blind.

Number four Gurdjieff calls: one who has become aware. Up to number three they are all unaware, unconscious, fast asleep. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know who they are. They don’t know from where they come. They don’t know where they are going. Number four is the one who has become a little alert, who can see. […]

Only number four can be called to the window. Only with number four can the Master share his experience.

With the first it is almost impossible to talk. To the first you can give prasad. The first one you can invite for a feast. Religion is nothing for him but a feast. Whenever a religious day comes, he eats better, he dresses well, he enjoys it.

To the second you can give emotional food: prayer, tears flowing down, sentimentality.

To the third you can talk much. He will appear to understand but will never understand. He is the intelligentsia, the intellectual.

Only with the fourth is a sharing possible – only with one who is a little alert, or is just on the brink of being alert. He is asleep, but turning in his sleep, and you know, now he is going to wake up; now any moment he is going to wake up. In this moment only, can a Master share his vision. When he sees that you are just on the brink of waking up, or are already awake and just lying down with closed eyes, or if just a little shaking is needed and you will open your eyes. […]

God is the possibility only for those who can see: the fourth, number four. With number four, religion enters into the world.

Up to number three the world is materialistic. Number three may be found in prayer houses, churches, temples, gurudwaras – but that makes no difference. With number four, religion becomes alive – throbs, beats, breathes. […]

I’m here only for those who belong to number four. Make haste to become number four, because if you are a little alert, I can lend my being. You can have a vision through it. I can bring you to my window and can ask you: ‘Do you see?’ But this is possible only with number four.

Then there is number five, whose awareness has become settled. Now for number five there is no need of lightning; he has his own inner light burning.

Then there is number six, all of whose discontent has disappeared, who is absolutely content. Nothing is there for him to achieve any more.

Then you will be surprised – then why does number seven exist? For number six everything is attained, fulfilled; there is nothing to attain. There is no higher than number six; number six is the highest. Then why number seven?

With number seven even contentment disappears. With the sixth, there is the feeling of fulfillment, a deep content, and arrival. With number seven, even that disappears. No content, no discontent; no emptiness, no fullness. Number seven has become God Himself. Number seven we have called the avatara: a Buddha, a Mahavir, a Krishna, a Christ. They are number seven.

-Osho

From The True Sage, Discourse #7

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Blissfulness Beyond Ignorance – Osho

You said one night that awareness brings knowledge and knowledge makes man aware of many problems and sufferings within himself. But isn’t it true that awareness and knowledge give more richness, growth and depth to man’s life?

Please explain about this dialectical situation in man and the way to transcend the knowledge as well.

Ignorance is blissful because in it one is not aware of any problem. But one is not aware of the blissfulness either. It is a bliss such as when you are in a deep sleep. No suffering is there, no anxiety is there, because no problems are possible when you are asleep. With knowledge one begins to be aware of many problems, and much suffering happens. This suffering will remain unless one transcends knowledge also.

So these are three states of the human mind: the first is ignorance, in which you are blissful but not aware; the second is knowledge, in which you are aware but not blissful; and the third is Enlightenment, in which you are awake and blissful. In one sense, Enlightenment is just like ignorance and in another sense just like knowledge. In one sense, it is like ignorance because it is blissful, and unlike knowledge because there is no suffering. In another sense, it is like knowledge because there is awareness, and unlike ignorance because ignorance is an absolute absence of awareness.

Enlightenment is blissfulness with awareness. Knowledge is a passage; it is a journey. You have left ignorance, but you have not achieved Enlightenment. You are in between. That is why knowledge is a tension. Either you fall back from knowledge or you go beyond. And falling back is not possible. You have to struggle to go beyond.

It is asked whether knowledge also gives richness, growth and depth to man’s life. Of course, it gives! It gives a richness because the moment you become aware, with the expanding awareness you are expanded, with widening awareness you go on becoming greater and greater – because you are your awareness. When ignorant, you are as if you are not. You do not know that you are. Existence is, but without any depth, without any height. With knowledge you begin to feel your multi-dimensional being, and richness is given by suffering.

Suffering is not something contrary to richness. Suffering makes you rich. Suffering is painful, but suffering gives you depth. Someone who has not suffered at all will be just superficial. The more you suffer, the more you have touched deeper realms. That is why a more sensitive man suffers more and a less sensitive man suffers less. A shallow mind will not suffer at all. The deeper the mind, the deeper becomes your suffering. So suffering is also richness.

Animals cannot suffer: only man suffers. Animals can be in pain, but pain is not suffering. When the mind begins to feel the pain and to think about it, to think about the meaning of it and the possibility to go beyond it, then it becomes suffering. If you simply feel pain, it is a very shallow thing.

It has been observed that rats have a four-minute range of thinking. They can think four minutes into the future and they can think four minutes back into the past. Beyond four minutes there is nothing for them. Their range of thinking is that much. There are other mammals whose range is twelve hours. Monkeys have a range of twenty-four hours. So the world that was twenty-four hours before, drops from their consciousness, and the world that may be twenty-four hours ahead is not. Their minds have a twenty-four-hour limit, so they cannot go deep.

Man has a very wide range. From childhood to death, the whole life is his range. And for those who are more sensitive, for them the range is still greater. They can remember their past lives and they can predict events beyond this life in the future. With this range depth is gained, but also suffering.

If a rat cannot go beyond four minutes, to suffer for the future is impossible, to suffer for the past is impossible. Within three or four minutes the whole world exists, so if there was pain four minutes before, it disappears after four minutes; no memory can be maintained. If there is fear four minutes ahead, it cannot be thought about, cannot be contemplated, cannot be perceived. It is not.

With man, suffering deepens because mind can move to the past and conceive of the future. Not only that: the mind can feel someone else suffering also. Animals cannot feel this. Higher animals have certain glimpses which lower animals cannot feel. In lower animals, if some member of the group dies they just forget about it. They will move on. Death is not a problem. Neither can they conceive of their own death, nor can they conceive that something has happened to some member of their group. It is impossible. It is as if it is not. But man conceives, feels, contemplates his own suffering and also others’ suffering.

With a more sensitive mind, the sympathy can even become empathy. You are in deep pain: I feel that you are in pain; I understand; I am sympathetic. But if my mind is even more keen, more sensitive, I may begin to feel the same pain. Then it is empathy.

Ramakrishna was crossing the Ganges one day in a boat and suddenly he began to scream and cry, “Do not beat me!” No one was beating him. All those who were present with him were his disciples, devoted disciples. They said, “What are you saying? Who is beating you? Who can beat you?” Tears were coming down from his eyes and he was crying, “Do not beat me!” They were all puzzled, and then Ramakrishna showed them that just on the other bank one man was being beaten by a crowd. Then he showed his back: his back had the marks of having been beaten. They reached to the other shore and they went to the man who was beaten there. They saw his back also. They were just wonderstruck. It was a miracle. The same marks were on his back as on Ramakrishna’s back.

This is empathy. Ramakrishna suffers more than you because now it is not only his suffering. In a very subtle way, the whole world’s suffering has become his own. Wherever suffering is, Ramakrishna will suffer it. But this will give depth to Ramakrishna. Suffering itself is depth. So knowledge gives suffering and knowledge gives depth. It gives richness to life.

Socrates is reported to have said, “Even if a pig is absolutely happy, I would still prefer to be a Socrates and unhappy than to be a pig and happy.”

Why? If a pig is happy then be a pig. Why be a Socrates and unhappy? The reason is depth. A pig is just without any depth. Socrates has suffering – more than anyone else – but still he chooses to be a Socrates with his suffering. This suffering too has a richness. A pig is just poor.

It is like this: someone is in a coma, unconscious; he has no suffering. Would you like to be unconscious in a coma? Then you will be without suffering. If that is the choice, then you will choose to be yourself, whatsoever the suffering may be. Then you will say, “I will remain conscious and suffer rather than be in a coma and not suffer, because that ‘not suffering’ is just like death.” Suffering is there, but still a richness – the richness of feeling, the richness of knowing, the richness of living. [. . . .]

Love has its own suffering. Really, a life without love has less suffering, so if you can avoid love, you can avoid much suffering. If you are vulnerable to love, you will suffer more. But love gives depth, richness, so if you have not suffered love, you have not really lived. Love is a deeper knowledge.

The knowledge which we call knowledge is just acquaintance – knowing someone, something, from the outside. When you love someone, you will know him from the inside. Now it is not acquaintance. Now you have gone deeper into someone and now you will suffer more, but love will give you a new dimension of life.

So a person who has not loved has not really lived on the human plane, and because love brings so much suffering we avoid it. Everyone is avoiding love. We have invented many tricks to avoid love because love brings suffering. But then if you are successful in avoiding love, you have succeeded in avoiding a certain depth that only love can bring to your life.

Grow in knowledge and you will grow in suffering. Grow in love and you will grow more in suffering – because love is a deeper knowledge. Richness will be there, but this is the paradox – and it is to be understood deeply: whenever you become more rich, you become aware of more poverty. Whenever you feel richness, you will also feel yourself more poor. Really, a poor man – a really poor man – never feels himself to be poor. Only a rich man begins to feel a deeper poverty. If you look at a beggar, he is happy with his small coins, very happy. You cannot even conceive of how he is happy. He gathers only a few coins in the whole day, but he is so happy.

Look at a rich man! He has gathered so much that he cannot use it even, but he is not happy. What has happened? The greater your riches, the more you begin to feel yourself poor. And this happens in every direction. When you know more, you feel more that you are ignorant. A person who doesn’t know anything never feels that he is ignorant. He never feels it! It is impossible because that feeling is part of knowing. The more you know, the more you become aware that much is to be known. The more you know, the more you feel that whatsoever you have known is nothing.

Newton is reported to have said: “I have been just standing on the seashore, and whatsoever I have gathered is sand in my fist – nothing more. This is a great infinite expanse. Whatsoever I have known is just a few particles of sand in my hand, and what I do not know is this infinite expanse of the ocean!” So Newton feels more ignorant than you can feel, because that feeling is part of knowledge.

If you can love, then you can feel the impossibility of love. Then you can feel that it is virtually impossible to love someone. But if you do not love anyone, you will never become aware that love is a very arduous journey – because when you go into something, only then do you become aware of your finite capacity and the infinite encounter. When I move out of my house, then I encounter the sky. If I go on remaining in my house there is no encounter, and I may finally come to believe that this is the whole universe.

The less you know, the more confident you are. The more you know, the less is your confidence. The greater the knowledge, the more will be the hesitance of the mind even to assert, even to say, what is right or what is wrong. The less the knowledge, the more you are totally certain. Just fifty years before, science was totally certain, absolutely certain. Everything was clear and categorized.

And then came Einstein who was perhaps the first scientific mind to encounter the full expanse of the world, of the universe. Then everything became uncertain. Einstein said, “To be certain about anything shows that you are ignorant. If you know, you can at the most be relatively certain.” “Relatively certain” is just another name for uncertain. “When everything is relative,” Einstein says, “then science can never again be absolute.” And now we have come to know so much knowledge that everything is disturbed and shattered. All certainties have gone.

Mahavira, one of the most penetrating minds in the whole history of man, will not assert any statement without using “perhaps” in the beginning. If you ask him, “Is there a God?” he will say, “Perhaps God is and perhaps He is not.”

Even if you ask him, “Are you real?” he will say, “Perhaps I am real and perhaps I am not real, because in a certain sense I am real and in a certain sense I am not real. When I am going to die, how can I say that I am real? One day I will just evaporate, and you will not even be able to find out where I have disappeared. How can I say that I am real?

I will disappear just as a dream disappears in the morning. But even then, I cannot say that certainly I am unreal – because even to assert that I am unreal, a reality is needed. Even to dream, someone is needed to dream who is real.” So he will say, “Perhaps I am real and perhaps I am not real.”

Because of this, Mahavira could not gather many followers. How can you gather followers if you yourself are so uncertain? Followers need certainty, absolute dogmatism. Say: “This is right and that is wrong.” Whether “that” is right is another thing – but be confident, and then you create confidence in your followers: because they have come to know, not to inquire. They have come to feel certainties. They have come for dogmas, not for real inquiry. So a lesser mind than Mahavira will gather more followers. Really, the lesser the mind, the easier it is to become a leader, because everyone is in need of certainty; then they can feel secure.

With Mahavira everything will look uncertain. And he was so emphatic that if you asked him one question, he would give seven answers. He would give you seven answers, each answer contradicting the previous one. Then the whole thing would become so complex that you would return more ignorant than you had come.

With Einstein, for the first time the genius of Mahavira has been introduced in science. Relativity is Mahavira’s concept. He says that everything is related, nothing is absolute. And that even the diametrically opposite is also true in a certain sense. But then his statements become so qualified, so bracketed, that you cannot feel certainty with them.

That is why, in India, only 2,500,000 Jains exist. If Mahavira had converted only twenty-five families, by now they would have become 2,500,000 just by reproduction! Only 2,500,000 after twenty-five centuries? What happened? Mahavira could not convert really. Such a keen mind cannot convert. It needs a lesser mind to create followers. The more stupid the leader, the better – because he can say yes or he can say no with much confidence and without knowing anything.

What really happens when you gain knowledge? You become aware of ignorance. And, really, richness means: with polarities. You cannot be rich if you know only one part. When you know both the polar opposites, when you move in both the extremes, then you become rich.

For example, if you know only beauty and you are not aware of ugliness, your sense of beauty cannot be very deep. How can it be? It is always proportionate. The more you begin to feel beauty, the more you will begin to feel ugliness. They are not two things but a movement of one sense in two directions. But the sense is one. You cannot say that “I am aware only of beauty.” How can you be? With this sense, with the aesthetic sense of the feeling of beauty, the feeling of ugliness will come in. The world will become more beautiful, but at the same time more ugly. That is the paradox.

You begin to feel the beauty of the sunset, but then you also begin to feel the ugliness of the poverty all around. If a person says, “I feel the beauty of the sunset and I do not feel the ugliness of poverty and the slums,” he is just deceiving either himself or others. It is impossible! When a sunset becomes beautiful, slums become ugly. And against a sunset, when you look at the slums, you will be in heaven and hell simultaneously. Everything is this way and everything is bound to be this way. One thing will create its opposite.

So if you are not aware of beauty, you will not be aware of ugliness. If you are aware of beauty, you have become aware of ugliness also. You will enjoy, you will feel the bliss of beauty, and then you will suffer. This is part of growth. Growth always means the knowledge of the extremes which constitute life. So when man becomes aware, he also becomes aware that he is not aware of many things and that because of that he suffers.

Many times, I have seen, observed, persons coming to me for meditation. They say, “I am very much disturbed, with pains inside, sufferings. Somehow, help me to still my mind.” I suggest to them something to do, then in a week they come back and say, “What have you done? I have become more disturbed!”

Why did it happen? Because when they begin to meditate, when they begin to feel a certain silence, they begin to feel the disturbance more. Against that silence, the disturbance is felt more keenly. Before they were simply disturbed, without any silence inside. Now they have something to judge against, to compare against. Now they say, “I am going mad.”

So whenever someone begins meditation, he will become aware of many things of which he was not previously aware, and because of that awareness he will suffer. This is how things are, and one has to pass through them.

So if you start meditation and you do not suffer, it means it is not meditation, but just a hypnosis. That means you are just drugging yourself. You are becoming more unconscious. With a real, authentic meditation you will suffer more, because you will become more aware. You will see the ugliness of your anger, you will feel the cruelty of your jealousy, you will now know the violence of your behavior. Now, in every gesture, you will begin to feel somewhere a hidden animal in you, and you will suffer. But this is how one grows. Growth is a painful birth. The child suffers when it comes out of the womb, but that is part and parcel of growth.

So it is right that awareness and knowledge bring more richness and growth and depth in man’s life – not because man doesn’t suffer, but because man suffers.

If someone has led just a smug existence – as it happens in rich families – you will feel, you will observe, that if a person is born rich, if he has lived without knowing suffering, without knowing the pain of living, without knowing anything, then whenever there is a demand, even before the demand the supply is there. He has not suffered hunger, he has not suffered love, he has not suffered anything. Whatsoever is demanded is supplied – rather. it is supplied even before the demand is there. But then look in the eyes of that man: you will not find any depth. It is as if he has not lived. He has not struggled; he does not know what life is.

That is why it is always very difficult to find any depth in such men. They are superficial. If they laugh, their laughter is superficial. It just comes from the lips, never from the heart. If they weep, that weeping is superficial. It is not from the depths of the being: it is just a formal thing. The more the struggle, the more the depth.

This depth, this richness, this knowledge, will create such a complexity that you would like to escape from it. When you suffer, you want to escape from it. If you are looking to escape from suffering, then alcohol can become appealing or LSD or marijuana or something else.

Religion means not escaping from suffering but living with it: living with it, not escaping! And if you live with it, you will become more and more aware. If you want to escape, then you will have to leave awareness. Then, somehow, you will have to become unconscious.

There are many methods. Alcohol is the easiest, but not the only method and not even the worst. You can go and listen to music and become absorbed in it; then you are using music as alcohol. Then for the time being, your mind is diverted toward music and you have forgotten everything else. Music is working as alcohol for everything else. Or you can go to a temple, or you can do japa. You can use these things as alcohol, as an intoxicant.

Anything which makes you less aware of your suffering is antireligious. Anything that makes you more aware of your suffering, and which helps you encounter it without escaping, is religious. That is what tapas – austerity – means. Tapas means this: not escaping from any suffering, but remaining there and living with it with full awareness. If you do not escape, if you remain there with your suffering, one day suffering will disappear and you will have grown into more awareness.

Suffering disappears in two ways. You become unconscious; then suffering disappears for you. But really, suffering remains there. It cannot disappear. It remains there! Really, your consciousness has disappeared, so you cannot feel it, you cannot be aware of it. If you become more conscious, in the meantime you will have to suffer more.

But accept suffering as a part of growth, as a part of training, as just a discipline, and then one day, when your consciousness has gone beyond your suffering, suffering will disappear not just for you – it will disappear objectively. Use suffering as a stepping-stone; do not escape from it. If you escape from it, you are escaping from your destiny, from the possibility of going beyond knowledge by using suffering as a device.

Mahavir has said, “Sometimes it happens that there is no suffering. Then create suffering, but do not lose any moment to create more awareness.” Mahavir would go on long fasts in order to create suffering, to encounter it, because through encounter awareness grows. He would live naked. It may have been summer, it may have been winter, it may have been the rainy season, but he would live naked, he would move naked. In every village, when he would move naked, everyone would become his enemy. They would create many sufferings for him, but he would not speak. For twelve years he was totally silent. If someone beat him, he would not speak. One could do whatsoever one liked, but he would not react. These were consciously created sufferings.

Buddha was not in agreement with Mahavira’s ideology, but even then, Buddha has called him mahatapaswi – the great ascetic. Really, no one is comparable to Mahavir in creating conscious suffering for himself. Why? When you can live with suffering consciously, you grow, you transcend it. Really, whenever you are in suffering you have an opportunity, so use it. Whenever you are not in suffering, this time will ultimately prove to be just a wastage. Only the moments when you are in suffering can be used. But, unfortunately. we try to escape suffering. We have been doing that for lives and lives.

Make an experiment, any experiment, and see what happens. The night is cold and you are on the terrace standing naked: feel the coldness; do not escape from it. Let it be there, and you remain there. Feel it, move with it, live with it, and see what happens: Beyond a certain point coldness will be there, you will be there, but there will be a gap between you and the coldness. Now the coldness cannot penetrate to you. You have transcended.

You are hungry: remain in it, and beyond a point you will know that you are not hungry. Hunger is somewhere else, and there is a gap between you and the hunger. When you begin to feel the gap, you will transcend it.

But there is no need to create suffering because suffering is already so much there. There is no need! Every day there is suffering. Suffer it consciously; do not try to escape. Then you have a key, a secret key to transform your suffering into a blessing.

This is what tapas means. It is an alchemical process. Then you transform the lower into the higher, the base metal into gold. But the baser metal has to pass through fire and the false must burn. Only then can the authentic emerge out of it. So knowledge is a fire. The ignorant soul must pass through this fire, and only then will the pure gold come out of it.

That pure gold is Enlightenment. When you have faced every suffering with consciousness, suffering will dissolve, disappear, because the very reason for it will have disappeared. You will go on and on, and suffering will be left behind and you will become a peak. This peak will have gone beyond it. This is Enlightenment.

There are three states: ignorance, knowledge, Enlightenment. Go beyond ignorance, but do not forget that knowledge is not the end. That is only the means. You have to go beyond it also. And when someone goes beyond knowledge, he becomes a Buddha. Then he is wise, not learned; wise, not more informed. It is not that he is more knowledgeable: he is simply wise, simply more aware.

So knowledge is good because it brings you out of ignorance, and knowledge is bad if you begin to cling to it. If it becomes a clinging, it is bad. Use knowledge to go beyond ignorance, and then through knowledge go beyond it.

Buddha tells a story which he liked very much. He reported this story thousands and thousands of times. He says knowledge is like a raft. You cross a river on a raft, and then you leave the raft and the river, and you move on.

Buddha says that there were five very learned men. They crossed the stream on a raft, and then they thought and pondered: “Because this raft has helped us to cross this stream, we must carry this raft on our heads. Now how can we be ungrateful? This is simply gratitude.”

So those five learned men carried that raft on their heads into the market. Then the whole village gathered and asked, “What are you doing? This is something new.”

They said, “Now we cannot leave this raft. This raft has helped us to cross the stream, and these are the days of rains and the river is flooded. It was impossible without this raft. This raft is a friend, and we are just being grateful.”

The whole village laughed. They said, “Yes, this raft was a friend, but now this raft is an enemy. Now you will suffer because of this raft, now it will be a bondage. Now you cannot move anywhere, now you cannot do anything else.”

Knowledge is a raft to go beyond ignorance, but then you must not begin to carry it on your head as these learned persons carried it. Really, it is not right to say “carry it”, because the burden becomes so much that you cannot even move. Throw this raft! It is difficult to throw because it has saved you. You have come across a stream with it.

And your logic may run in this way; “If we throw this raft, then we will be again in the same situation in which we were before, before the raft was used.” This looks logical, but it is not – because when there was no raft you were on one bank of the stream; when you have used the raft you have come to another bank of the stream, and if you throw it you will not be in the same situation again.

Man is afraid of throwing knowledge because he fears that he will again become ignorant. You cannot become ignorant again. A person who has known cannot fall back into ignorance. But if he now clings to this knowledge, he cannot go beyond either. Throw it! You are not going to fall back into ignorance. You will rise into Enlightenment.

One rises into knowledge by throwing ignorance, and then one rises into Enlightenment by throwing knowledge. So it is good to teach knowledge to the ignorant, and it is good to teach again a different kind of ignorance to the knowledgeable ones. One has to become ignorant in a different dimension, with a different quality, just by throwing knowledge.

So it is inevitable that one must come to knowledge, but then it is not inevitable that one must remain there. You must pass through it. That is a must, it cannot be avoided; but you must not remain there. You must move – move from knowledge: this is what is meant.

How to transcend this knowledge? As I said, if you become aware of suffering, you transcend it. If you become aware of your knowledge, you transcend knowledge. Awareness is the only technique of transcendence, whatsoever may be the problem. Awareness is the only technique of transcendence!

You know many things; then you become identified with your knowledge. Then if someone denies your knowledge or contradicts it, you feel hurt, as if he has denied you or as if he has contradicted you. Your knowledge is something different from you. Feel the gap. You are not your knowledge.

The moment you can feel this, that “I am not my knowledge,” then try to be aware of it. Be aware that “This I know, this I do not know, and that which I know may be right or may not be right.” Do not become mad with it, do not become involved.

Socrates used to say, he would say always, “As far as my knowledge goes this seems to be true – only seems to be true. And that is only as far as my knowledge goes. It may not be true because knowledge can go further; it may not be true because it only appears to be true to me.” Then if someone contradicts him, he cannot feel hurt. Rather, that person is helping him. Why should he feel hurt?

If someone says, “You are wrong,” he is giving you more knowledge – something more, something different., If you are not identified, you will feel grateful; if you are identified, you will feel hurt. Then it is not a question of knowledge: it is a question of an egoist cycle. Then it is not that he has said, “Whatsoever you say is wrong.” Really, he has said, “you are wrong.” You feel it that way. If you feel it that way, then you can never be aware of your knowledge. Be aware! It is an accumulation, but it has helped. It has utility.

The Buddhist, the Zen Buddhist word for knowledge is upaya. They call it is just an instrument. Use it, but do not be mad, do not become obsessed with it, do not be identified with it. Remain aloof, remain detached. This aloofness, this remaining detached, is the first necessity. And then be aware. Whenever you are saying something, say it with a clear awareness that it is not you, but only your knowledge. This awareness will lead you beyond it.

So whatsoever may be the problem, being identified with it will create unconsciousness, and you will fall back. Being aware of it will create consciousness, and you will go beyond.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2 #9, Q1

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

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